My good friend

Wine o'clock

Just had a good friend leave this earth this morning.   Sometimes you don't realize just how good a friend is till they're  gone.  A beautiful, strong, and I mean strong, funny, truly caring authentic women who I admire and love.  I think of her wonderful boys and husband and ache for their loss. My love and prayers are with you. Her family and friends too.  She was so friendly; genuinely friendly.  She had so many friends.  She was a rebel too;  in the best sense.  She taught me a lot:  To, as she would say "Go for it!" I still don't do that enough.  To be brave.   To stand up for yourself, always with love.  She was fun loving!  This is a women who would do cartwheels down the isle of her office!  Always striving to do her best.  She was amazing. She could dance.  She was real. 

I miss her.

I am reminded again of this prayer and whatever you believe to be thankful for the ones we love and the time we have with them.

Dear God,

thank You for my loved ones, and for choosing me from all others to love and care for them. Fill me with Your Spirit to share Your warmth and love with my dear ones, and bless them with Your joy, peace, and grace. May we come someday as one family to live with You forever in heaven.

Amen 

Just for fun!

I'm still working on the "Change" thing but............

I Love Erin Smith!!

Thank you Deb for the "thought of the day"!

Is change possible?

What do you think?

Only love is real? Really?

 Wine O'clock.  I love it!

I just went on a music spree and purchased 10 new songs one of which is "Only Love" Melissa Etheridge.
I was loving this song  and then I thought "Really?"  Is that true for the people who are suffering in the world? I mean the homeless, the hungry,  people without country, the hopeless.   People who are truly suffering.  I guess we all have our own suffering.  In that moment of suffering, whatever that might be for you and me, do you come to the this truth? "Only Love  is Real."

What a beautiful song.  A "Thin Moment" for me always made more possible with the help of  wineo"clock.  That right side of the brain that I love to dwell in!

I love the line "Everything you feel That's what your world is made of"  So true for me.  Yet feelings can be deceiving.  Leading us down the wrong path.

Another lyric:  "We are in charge of our own dreams  We have more power than it seems so look around"

 Is so great. To me it implies choice.

So..........What are your thoughts?  Below are the lyrics.  It's the first song on my playlist.


It takes me so long to understand sometimes
Why it's so hard to understand sometimes
It takes me two or three times sometimes
To, to try to get it right sometimes, to get it right

I've got some coins in my pocket
And I've got a colored TV
It's gotten so complicated now
What does it mean to be free?

Only love is real
Everything is love
Everything you feel
That's what your world is made of
And when I take a good look around I see
My thoughts are coming back to me so look around
We are in charge of our own dreams
We have more power than it seems so look around

Come on, now, show me who you're loving, yeah
Then show me just who you hate
Then I can show you all your angels, yeah
That guard your heaven's gate

Only love is real
Everything is love
Everything you feel
That's what your world is made of, yeah

Only love is real
Everything is love
Everything you feel
That's what your world is made of, yeah

That's what your world is made of
That's what your world is made of

Only love, everything, everything you feel
That's what your world
That's what your world is made of
Only love

"Love without Conditions"

So I've been reading a book called "Love without conditions" by Paul Ferrini. Is it weird, serendipitous, or an answer to prayer that I had been struggling and I "stumbled" on this book in the course of my daily activities? There was a statement on the front page of the book from a name I recognized from my psychology classes in collage.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. "The most important books I have read. I study them like a Bible."

There is so much in this book. I will have to read again. Here are just a few exerts:

Each of us has a tiny spark of light that illuminates the darkness of our unconsciousness. this is the divine spark of awareness which keeps our connection with God alive.

Love is stronger than fear. Do not underestimate the degree to which your world is created out of fear.

Judgment falls away, acceptance rules.

Cause and Effect are not linear and sequential. They manifest simultaneously. They are circular in nature. Not only does cause determine effect, but effect determines cause.

Relinquishing Effort:
If you want to understand what happens in your life, stop giving it your own meaning. Let the situation be. Feel it fully. Allow it to teach you why it has come into your life. If you want to come right to the center of it, ask "how does this situation help me learn to love more fully? What does it ask me to give that I am still withholding?'

Two very insightful questions! Most recently my answer to the second question was acceptance.

wineoclock

I

It Is What It Is

Real time 3-15-11

Life is sometimes hard and painful and no amount of wine or fluffy talk or inspirational words will change that.

Truth & Dicipline

Wine O'clock.

I finally watched the movie version of "Eat Pray Love" and it was disappointing as I new it would be, except for two things. A song by Eddie Vedder at the end credits and an idea she(the author) calls Quest Physics. It's at the very end of the movie. I don't remember it in the book, but I really like it. I wanted to share it with "all of you".

A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of quest physics goes something like this:

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comfortable which can be anything from your house to bitter old resentments and set out on a truth seeking journey either externally or internally and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, the truth will not be withheld from you


Also, because music is often a "thin place" for me, here are the lyrics to "Better Days" by Eddie Vedder. It's the first song on my playlist.


I feel part of the universe open up to meet me
My emotion so submerged broken down to kneel in
Once listening the voices they came
Had to somehow greet myself read myself
Heard vibrations within my cells in my cells

Singing "Ah-la-ah-ah ah-la-ah-ah"

My love is safe for the universe
See me now I'm bursting
On one planet so many turns
Different worlds

Singing "Ah-la-ah-ah ah-ah-ah-ah ah"

(Spanish guitar solo)

Fill my heart with discipline
Put there for the teaching
In my head see clouds of stairs
Help me as I'm reaching
The future's paved with better days

Not running from something
I'm running towards the day
Wide awake
A whisper once quiet
Now rising to a scream
Right in me

I'm falling free falling
Words calling me
Up off my knees

I'm soaring and darling
You'll be the one that I can need
Still be free

Our future's paved with better days

Trouble

The Thanksgiving Post was so lovely and fluffy wasn't it?. Ya right.

It's easy when things are going the way you want? All that "unconditional love. the end" stuff of mine. "How much wine is she drinking anyway! you may think. " Well, not enough I say! because I've been in my "monkey mind" repeatedly since then. Remember the Buddhist monkey from my post from 5-3-10. The Buddhists called it the "monkey mind" "the thoughts that swing form limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl." Well I've being swinging with the howling monkey. I thought I had made a narrow escape once. All it took was a day and a half(which I'll never get back), a run, and of course a glass or two of wine. I thought PHEW I escaped. That was going to be my post title "A Narrow Escape" But no, He (the monkey-my buddy) came back again for another ride and I hopped on. I've been on several rides in fact since then.

I thought I was getting wiser, stronger, better at this. Dealing with life and it's adversity. Well, I need to take some of my own medicine. -Oh it's a jagged little pill.-

Today I was really fighting the monkey when I got a nice little kick in the ass from a facebook comment that reminded me:

I control my response to any situation. (the space between)
Don't take things personal
Trust myself.

What a tri-fecta!

It's all pretty tough and it's too early to drink! so I'll just do what Yahweh told me to one day while running on the canal-

"Practice Robin"

Trouble
Don't you see
That in your bed
I find no sleep
I confess you came because of me
Trouble get behind me now
Trouble let me be

Cold wet stone
Deep river bed
Once so clean and clear now runs red
You know to well
Was me that called you here
Trouble get behind me now
Trouble let me be

Oh sweet day
Leave me behind
I will never call on you
Until the day I die
Pray your mercy shine on me
Pray your mercy shine

Here I stand
Head bowed for thee
My empty heart begs you
Leave me be
But I confess
You know too well
That I have fallen
Pray your mercy give to me
Pray your mercy shine
Trouble
Trouble thee
Let your mercy shine

Cold wet stone
River deep and red
Your cold heart beats inside my head
You know too well
It was me that brought you here
Ohhh trouble get behind me now
Trouble let me be
I pray your mercy shine on me
Trouble let me be


Dave Matthews Band

Thanksgiving: What a beautiful word!

It is wine o'clock and I wanted to share a pray today. It's from a prayer cube given to me by a family member I love and admire! It's one of my favorite prayers and I think it's perfect for Thanksgiving!

Dear God,

thank You for my loved ones, and for choosing me from all others to love and care for them. Fill me with Your Spirit to share Your warmth and love with my dear ones, and bless them with Your joy, peace, and grace. May we come someday as one family to live with You forever in heaven.

Amen

Wow I'm fa-clement! What a great prayer for today! I know sometimes families and loved ones are tough. So many emotions good and sometimes painful. But I'm reminded of a thought I heard in church months ago. Maybe we are with our specific families for a reason. If we have strife with one another maybe that's why we are connected. There is a purpose. Something we need to learn or perhaps teach. Again I come to the answer the wine give me:

Unconditional Love. The end.

Inner Strength

"Inner Strength". What is it? What does it look like? Where does it come from?

Is it staying "true" to yourself" when you're being pushed another way. Is it standing up for what you believe in or for your own wants, needs, or desires in the face of opposition?

Is it "bending" without breaking for the benefit of someone else. Strong enough to put aside your own needs for the needs of someone else?

Is it the ability to compromise for a mutual benefit?

Or is it simply just "keeping on" when you feel weak, tired or like you can't continue?

Is it one of these or all these? And how do you know what and when?

When are you being "true to yourself" and not being selfish?

When is it bending with the strength to not break for the good of someone else or just giving in to someone else will?

• “Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.”

Katherine Dunham

• Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

• Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.

Ralph Sockman

• When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

Ralph Ellison

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

• All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

Buddha

• Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution. ~

Kahlil Gibran

"Thin Places"

Yesterday I was "running"ha ha, in the morning on the canal that backs up to our house. It was about 6:00am and there was a cool breeze blowing. I noticed the sound of the leaves rustling and the way the light reflected off them. I looked at the ripples the breeze created on the water in the canal with the light dancing off them. It was beautiful and peaceful. I was thinking about why. Why did the simple breeze, water and leaves seem so beautiful to me? Why did they create a feeling of peace and calm in me? Maybe it's because these things are of nature and that the light and spirit of God is in them. Something so simple as a cool breeze rustling the leaves of a tree can be so calming and connect us more to ourselves if we take the time to experience it.

That morning was Sept 2nd. Its now Sept 27 and I have just read a chapter in the current book I'm reading.

The Chapter is called Thin Places Opening the Heart. "Thin Places" is a metaphor from Celtic Christianity that began in the fifth century. It's a way of thinking about God that sees God as "the More," as the encompassing Spirit in which everything is. God is not somewhere else, but "right here" This way of thinking affirms that there are minimally two layers or dimensions of reality, the visible world of our ordinary experience and God, the sacred, Spirit.

One of the authors favorite quotations expressing this understanding of God is from Thomas Merton, a twentieth-century Trappist monk:

"Life is simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything-in people, and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it."

The author says occasionally we do "see it", do experience God shining through everything.
"Thin Places" are places where these two levels of reality meet or intersect. He goes on to say that a thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened. A thin place is a means of grace. He says there are many kinds of thin places for example nature, especially wilderness areas, music, poetry, literature, the visual arts, and dance can all become thin places in which the boundary between one's self and the world momentarily disappears.

Wow! This reminds me of that morning I wrote about on Sept 2nd and about so many other moments! It's cool.

There's more about it in the book but one key thing is that the spirit of God operates through "thin places" to open hearts.