“You always. You never. Why can’t you just? Do you realize you?” I stood in my kitchen, futilely swatting at fruit flies with a pot holder, again replaying the recent accusations of a special relationship like a favorite song stuck in my head. Vaguely, increasingly, and uncomfortably aware that a part of me actually enjoyed […]
Lean on me
Lean on me, when you’re not strong And I’ll be your friend I’ll help you carry on For it won’t be long ‘Til I’m gonna need Somebody to lean on -Bill Withers “So self-reliant,” they would say. Parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and teachers; referring to the way I seemed to have entered this world so […]
Be you in charge
Forget this book: well; maybe tomorrow
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
A couple years ago I had an epiphany of sorts while contemplating the recurring, ever-strengthening urge to begin formally teaching A Course in Miracles classes versus my colossal resistance to that preposterous idea. Since adolescence I had been seemingly crippled with a debilitating fear not only of speaking in public but of being the center […]
Just a little willingness
I keep trying to resurrect in an imaginary past or seek in a future that never comes. But love is right here, right now, always has been, always will be, completely unaffected by the constantly morphing conditions of the dream and dream figures I think I need to personally purify and steady to enable peace to arrive.
I need do nothing
Perhaps inspired by sudden-onset spring weather—a harbinger of impending outdoor family celebrations–people were flipping each other off en masse in the parking lot at Costco as if responding to an invisible choreographer as we ventured in to order a graduation cake. Clinging to our over-sized, bumper car-like cart as we navigated the crowded warehouse aisles, my daughter burst into tears over a classmate’s apparent texted attempt to deliberately exclude her. Again.
The egg that cracked
When my daughter was in kindergarten she won an award in our school district’s “Young Authors” competition for a picture book she wrote and illustrated entitled The Egg That Cracked. The story involved an egg fearful of cracking, of giving up its shell to the life within. One day the long stationary egg found itself rolling down a big hill, terrified. At the bottom it hit a rock, cracked open, and discovered it was not the shell after all, but the baby bird within
Wilted lilies, growing up too soon, and a recipe for forgiveness
It all started benignly enough the Thursday night before Easter with a lovely discussion and meditation in my weekly A Course in Miracles class. We considered The Gift of Lilies in Chapter 20, wherein we learn that the true meaning of this most sacred of Christian holiday turns out to be not unlike the true meaning of Christmas, Groundhog Day, April Fools’ Day, Halloween, or any other day of the year–learning to take back responsibility for our own peace of mind. You know; rather than attributing it to everyone and thing seemingly “out there” on which we project our guilt over secretly believing we succeeded in separating from the forever-loving fold of our one eternal wholeness.
Forgiveness: No previous experience required (or desired)
I had been mentally complaining to Jesus (that symbol of the one awakened mind we share) about a number of brewing situations in my seemingly cavernous interactive forgiveness classroom, asking him to help me count like beads on a Montessori chain the many new ways in which I perceived myself vulnerable. I recently had a […]