What a January

What a month this has been!  I suspect that when I look back in the future, it will stand out big-time.

First of all, that sense of “feeling” the love of the Universe has stayed with me since the other day, and how appreciative I am. It’s interesting to take a quick scan of sixty years: my first twenty-five years were immersed in the glorious words and music (but distant God) of The Book of Common Prayer.  I cleared the decks, and for at least another twenty-five, I wandered in the proverbial desert and tried, willy-nilly, to connect with any existential meaning I could find.  Around ten years ago, I discovered the law of attraction, and resonated increasingly with this articulation of a magnetic, loving Source but it was all kind of intellectual.  Now, finally, I’m a mere three days into feeling that love, and, hey, if that’s the path I needed to take, it was all worth it.  It makes me laugh that it took coming almost full circle and channeling the energy of a gaggle of heroic, medieval Julian of Norwich-style mystics and queens, who seem to be communicating the energetic equivalent of “You go, girl!”  I suppose all of us have a unique cheering section somewhere up there in the stars, but it’s like a radio station, until you tune into the right one for you, it’s all static.  Anyway, glad to have these wonderful women on board!

Another focus this week was my reaction to a media reference to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  You know the concept, that humans are motivated first to fill basic needs of housing, food, etc., and once those are met, we can move up the ladder to love, increasingly fulfilling work, recognition, then (all the other steps having been successfully achieved) finally self-actualization and connectedness with the Divine.  I’ll spare you the lengthy deconstruction (there’s nothing I do better than picking apart old paradigms!)  Let’s just say that this model has never worked for me.  Whenever I have tried to focus on securing basic needs in a traditional way, all I’ve managed to create was, yup, basic neediness. Law of attraction works so well! I question whether this model, created in the aftermath of the Great Depression, is still valid at all in these fast-paced times, but particularly for us right brain/creative/mystical types. The Liz model wouldn’t be hierarchical at all; it would be a circle with the individual aligned with their power source in the center, from which they would attract their best “work/expressive” opportunities, respect, love, and basic necessities. Just putting it out there…

Lastly, thanks to the Tut “Infinite Possibilities 30-Day Project,” which brought some focus to a process that I had already started on my own.  I have been writing intensively, “creating” a scenario where I am living in the optimum place for my interests, busy, abundant, healthy, learning, singing, thinking, writing, working, growing, loving and totally alive.  I can describe this life with such amazing clarity that it almost feels like it has been in place all along.  According to the New Physics, perhaps it has been.  Actually, I could have described it to a tee 40 years ago, but I just didn’t believe I had the power, the access to the power, or the worthiness to permanently live the life that was right for me.  That is shifting. Wow.

February 2016?  Can’t wait!  Seriously.  Let’s all keep going, friends!

 

Until Last Night

This is not the blog planned for today.  That one may be revamped for sometime later this week.

No, I need to get back to the topic of "love." It's a word that I know I never understood until sometime in year 59, not really, and maybe not even until last night.  I watched the movie, Saving Mr. Banks -- a really beautiful film about the unlikely collaboration between ultra-stuffy, British P.L. Travers, the female author of Mary Poppins, and Walt Disney, as the film was being made back in the early 60's.  I don't think it gives away the plot to say that her heart "melts" during the course of the film, and I had an odd parallel experience after watching it.  Initially, dozens of childhood memories played through on my own inner movie screen, including seeing the movie at Proctor's Theatre in downtown Schenectady when it came out.  My own love for things English had started by the time I saw Mary Poppins, but I am sure sitting in the seats of that glorious theatre with a bag of popcorn, listening to Julie Andrews singing, cemented it.

The next few sentences take more courage to write than any I have ever written. I have always taken a pretty intellectual approach to religion and my Christian heritage, studying it more like a scholar and singing its music like a musician. While clearly having mystical sensibilities, I have never understood people having a personal "relationship" to God or Jesus.  In recent years as I have explored New Age/New Thought/Law of Attraction spirituality, I have still struggled to really connect to the divine on a heart level.  I could make "sense" of the energy of the universe being like a river of love and passion, and could see intellectually how that leads to more and more growth in the world.  But none of my theoretical conclusions had yet really hit home. I still felt as if my little life was invisible to the divine, and that I was in this river without a life vest, to splash and scramble around on my own, sink-or-swim style, with random waves buffeting me.

So as I was preparing to go to sleep, to almost audibly hear the words, "We love you and we will support you" and to know that this message was coming from some divine plane, really threw me.  I knew "we" to be sort of a cosmic crowd, all the various ways that God is represented, and every holy being that I've ever heard of, particularly the female saints and mystics I used to read about as a kid (and St. Valeria, to whom the piece of music I studied for my master's was dedicated.)  It was like all of a sudden, I became aware of a cheering section that was cheering me on!  I could feel them around me. I could feel love.  In the last scene of Saving Mr. Banks, you literally see Emma Thompson (Travers) tearfully catching up with her own humanity, and maybe if someone had seen me last night a few hours after the video was turned off, they might have seen a similar thing.

This week, too many of my friends and their family members are undergoing challenging medical situations.  Healing is a "whole 'nother" topic for another day, but I am sitting here this minute bursting with such love for these friends, and others who have made my unconventional path a little smoother.  I have rarely actually been alone.  It's just that I felt alone in the universe.  Until last night. 

Pride

When I was growing up, there was a plate in the cabinet with a Currier-and-Ives-type illustration of a little Dutch boy with a satisfied smirk on his face, skating right toward a huge hole in the ice.  The inscription around the edge of the plate?  “Pride Goeth Before a Fall.”

The other day, I started to tell a friend about one of my published articles about English composer Herbert Howells.  And yet, within about a sentence, my articulate self had vanished.  My voice became dismissive, even satirical, and I was rolling my eyes and making faces.  Fortunately, this wise friend stopped me in my tracks, and said something to the effect of, “Liz, start that sentence over as if you were proud of yourself.”

Unlike many people, I think I have never wavered in my sense of connectedness to Source, and that may be a remarkable thing.  But the empty hole inside has had to do with my expectations about how other people will value me and my talents and accomplishments.  Those are two totally different things, and at least I’m relieved to “get” the difference.   There are three things that I am the most “proud” of – achieving my MMus (in historical musicology) from the University of London; my lifelong efforts to sing choral evensong; and my two articles on Howells.   For a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that none of these really “register” in the US as major accomplishments, I’ve never had the sense that my efforts have been widely noticed or appreciated (and of course because that was my belief, I drew that reality to me.)  And none of the three “earned” me any money.  In fact, directly or indirectly, they all cost me money I didn’t have!  So even now, when I feel stronger and more powerful than I ever have in my life, my tendency to make pre-emptive fun of myself before someone else can do it for me came to the fore.

It’s so funny.  I don’t think I even know how to have the kind of pride cautioned against in that traditional adage.  The kind of snarky, “Nyah, nyah, I’m winning this race and you aren’t!”  “I’ve got a million dollars and you don’t!” “I’m in charge here, and you’re an underling!”  I mean, it all seems so school-boyish and as far as can possibly be from my experience.  And yet there are more subtle forms of pride, Jane Austen-like, and I suspect in ways I have been guilty on occasion of hiding fearfully behind a mask of superiority or detachment.  Yet I can’t help but think that for many of us women (and certainly women of my generation and earlier), the whole problem is the reverse.  We were decidedly not encouraged early on to “be ourselves” or to achieve or win the race or exude power.  So even the most modest efforts to blow our own horn feel uncomfortable for some of us, and we may fall back on kind of twisted/self-effacing humor, cynicism, anger or frustration.

What is the “third way” here?  Pride, perhaps, that is not referential to the status of others; that is not dependent on the success or failure of others.  The pride that says, “Woo, hoo!  I’ve done something where I am really aligned with Source, and I am who I was put on the planet to be!  Wow, I’m in the groove, I’m flowing with the gentle, supportive river of life!  I feel joyful and powerful! Life is good!”  On this frigid winter day, I don’t believe that the inevitable outcome of that kind of pride should be falling through the ice, and speaking only for myself, I need to replace the ice skater image pronto!

As I write this, I realize that there is one more thing I am proud of – this blog.  Yes, it’s up there with the other three.  Despite what I said the other day about fearlessness, I have not yet built up the courage to open this up to reader comments, so please forgive me for that.  Just know that I treasure my readers and hope that 2016 brings you, too, some things to be proud of in a new-fashioned way!  We’re doing it!

 

Money II

Over the last few weeks, I’ve learned about some intriguing alternative authors and concepts on money.  The first is a writer named Charles Eisenstein, whose book, Sacred Economics, I haven’t yet read, but I love the title.  Reading his online biography was like reading my own.  He speaks of how in his late twenties, he entered a crisis because “it became excruciating to do work I didn’t care about.”  Yes.  It is.

And then last Thursday on NPR’s “On Point,” the Basic Income movement was discussed, something I had never heard of.   Basically, this is a proposal that every adult be provided with a small income, free from work expectations.  I don’t know about the political or economic implications of this and have just barely begun to read about it.  No one concept is “the answer” to everything going on in the world, economically.  But spiritually, it appears to resonate with what I believe – that every human being is “worth-y” just by virtue of being on the planet.  At the very least, a basic income could revolutionize the lives of writers, musicians, artists, mystics, dancers and poets and free them up to do their real work. It could give everyone a minimal safety net/starting point as institutions and technologies change radically, literally faster than ever before in history, faster than most people can keep up with. (I look at job postings now, and it’s like reading Greek.  I don’t even understand what most of the jobs are.) Evidently, what was a really fringe idea not long ago has begun to be given more and more serious consideration worldwide.

Gosh, what would the last few years have been like if I had had such a “basic income” in the midst of trying to realign with my calling?  On the one hand, it sounds literally heavenly; perhaps I could even have kept a tiny studio apartment as a home base.  But on the other hand, I might have missed out on learning that there is an even bigger support system out there – our Source – and that many of my friends are literally angels in disguise.  I might have missed out on becoming nearly fearless.  On some deep level, I chose to learn these important lessons, and my life unfolded in an untidily perfect way.

It makes me happy to think that we may be starting to tilt in the direction of a more love- (rather than fear-) centered economy and society.  There’s a lot of noisy pushback, but if many of us hold on to our integrity in the midst of it all, the paradigm will continue to change.  And the great thing is we don’t have to “fight” the old constructs, just “be” a new one as best we can.

 

Locks

On this Friday morning, I’m trying to take in tons of news, the biggest item, for me, being the three-year suspension of America’s Episcopal Church from the worldwide Anglican Communion, primarily over the issue of LGBT rights.  The US church has been way ahead of England and the rest of the world on social issues, which of course include the role of women in the church.  But the reality of the American church being, in effect, kicked out of the family is heart-wrenching.  My personal paradox (being on a superficial level not even part of the “family,”  but being musically, and on a deep level, spiritually, at home in the most ancient, unchanged expression of the Anglican tradition) has never been a harder identity to wear.

I’m going to try to tie this news into the topic I had already decided to discuss today!  Bear with me!

OK, so in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, I listened to an Abraham-Hicks audio on YouTube, one which provided the perfect metaphor for the last few months of my life. 

This was audio taken from a question/answer session on what must have been one of their cruises, because Esther Hicks (as “Abraham”) made a reference to one of the locks the boat had been through, and then used it as a life metaphor.  Here, I’ll kind of “riff” on that, adding a bit of my own interpretation.

So, you’re in a boat on a river, and you reach a lock, and the only way for you to get to your destination and continue down the river is to enter it.  (I grew up in Schenectady, New York, in the vicinity of numerous locks from the Erie Canal system.  My parents took us on occasion to watch boats going through the locks.) You can decide not to continue on this course, I suppose, but once you enter the lock, the metal gates close behind you and your course is set.  The chamber that is created by the closed metal gates at both ends is somewhat scary. 

So there you are in your boat, surrounded by towering walls.  You have been attached by lines to the side, and other than that, there’s not much for you at the helm to do. You could freak out and jump into the water and find the little side ladder and run for the hills; or you can toodle about the cabin, make yourself a quick snack, or go on a bathroom break.  You can study your charts or make a few phone calls.  But there is nothing for you to “do” but wait as water is gradually added to the container, your boat rises, and you are finally up to the new water level.  You cannot actively “sail.” Once you reach that level, you are untied from the side and can go on your way.

Metaphorically, you’ve left one stage of life, the metal gates have closed shut, and the only way to proceed is to wait while the Universe brings the supportive water into your life so that you can sail forward.  There can be some regret at leaving that old stretch of river, and fear at seeing the doors close solidly behind you, but something in you knows that life will never be the same again; if there was an opportunity to change your mind and go backward, you’ve missed it.  This journey through the lock may be emotionally wrenching, but it’s the only way to move forward.

My life has been like that, a few months in a stable chamber (so to speak) while the water of my life rises to a new level.  I’ve never been on this river (specific life path) before, so it’s a bit unnerving not to see over the big gates to the landscape ahead.  It’s unnerving to know some basics about the next stretch of river -- like that that water will support me! -- but not any detail.  Yet now that my boat is nearing the top of the lock, I’m getting ready to steer it into the next stretch of river, and all in all, I’m genuinely eager to move on.

Perhaps a case could be made that the Episcopal Church has entered a lock, and the doors have closed behind it.  Who knows where it, as an institution, will be in three years, or the other branches of the church family?  And many of you may be entering “locks” of your own due to illness, job loss, death of family or friends, or another event.  The journey to the next level may take a few days, a few months, or several years.  But the key thing to the lock metaphor is that you are moving – upwards!  Hang in there.  Keep breathing.

 

 

Progress

A friend just observed that I am apologizing less and less often.  This is huge progress, and I am so thankful for it.  This has been a lifelong habit, almost "addiction," and it wasn't of the British-style "Sorry! could you repeat what you said? I didn't hear you" variety.  Deep down, it was of the "I really should not be taking up space on the planet" variety, something no one should ever, ever feel.

All of us who are here are meant to be here.  All of us have value.  All of us are meant to be happy, to be powerful, and to thrive.  And whatever our unique gift, it is here for a reason.  If I have stopped apologizing so much, it is not by trying to "stop."  It is because of openly trying to "start" being who I am really meant to be.  If you share this affliction, I hold in the light the gradual unfolding of the real you!  Let's rock it today!

An Experiment

Good morning!

This morning, I discovered some online interviews/podcasts by Elizabeth Gilbert (www.elizabethgilbert.com) called Magic Lessons.  The one I happened to listen to was an interview with author Brene Brown on the topic of creativity, and it was one of the most exciting half hours of my life.  So much wisdom was spoken by these two women in such a short span of time, I can't begin to relate it all, so I just recommend it highly.  The line I loved most, perhaps, was when Brown said something to the effect where even five years ago, she pooh-poohed creativity, telling friends to go ahead and do A-R-T but she had to do her J-O-B.  But since then, she has had a radical turnaround where she believes that expressing creativity is absolutely central and crucial to every human being, even those who haven't considered themselves as creators.  I now need to read books by both women.

I find myself, as I started to allude the other day, in the midst of what can only be called a major creative experiment of my own.  Well, living life as an experiment started five years ago, but right now, I am throwing my full focus and energy into it in a way I wasn't quite ready to do before. 

Early in 2015, I attempted to start writing the story of my life, and it got bogged down for several reasons, not only the sense of discomfort I felt in wading around in the past, the impatience I felt with what felt like an old-fashioned process, and my brother's death, but also in finding a new (and wonderful) temporary home.  By fall, I realized that I wasn't going to be writing an autobiography in the traditional sense after all, at least not now.

What I started the other day is rather an extreme version of what I believe Abraham-Hicks calls  "telling your new story."  It is, in effect, a journal of my future.  I'm not going to go into the details here yet, but just suffice it to say that I am stunned by how fully and realistically -- perhaps as a result of a lifetime of longing! -- I can describe this ideal daily life.  I am supporting it (good Smithie that I am) with facts, in the sense that I'm researching online as many of the details as I can -- the hours of choral evensong services, the dates of concerts I wish to attend, and networking and work/writing/research possibilities, etc.  Mind you, I'm not actively applying for jobs or buying concert tickets...for now, I am just writing some of these details into my account for each day in my ideal near future.

I've always had such a sense of loss/bittersweet frustration around my dream in the past, such a sense that "there was no future to it," and this exercise has totally turned that around. My dream, for the first time ever, feels joyful, fun, satisfying and real.  Dream isn't really the right word, I don't think.  I think the right word is "reality in which I can be creative to the optimum extent in this lifetime."  "Dream" is a word too easily ridiculed and marginalized, as is, perhaps, "creativity." And yet our world would not exist without dreams or creativity.  Our next steps wouldn't exist.  The most cutting edge technologies wouldn't exist. 

This "go big or go home" experiment is literally about creating a life, a real life of doing one's real work, by being there before it happens, by feeling the happiness before the "reality" is in front of me.  By probably early April, I'll see if this use of my time was successful or not, because it feels like a reality that will materialize quickly.  If it does, my dear readers will have been in at the inception -- and my book will be all-but-written, and I might be doing podcasts too!  I guarantee I will keep you posted.

Saturday Miscellany

One thing I have decided about being on the threshold of 60 is that when you discover something that genuinely interests you, thrills you, or appeals to you, you really need to pay attention.  Last night, I saw the movie "Tim's Vermeer," about inventor Tim Jenison's effort to paint a painting using the method he believes Vermeer used.  This is an amazing documentary, and I highly recommend it, because he may well have solved the mystery of how the 17th century painter achieved such realistic results.  But in the end, I think what just thrilled me was Jenison's own genius and willingness to openly explore his theory, despite the fact that he isn't a painter.  I guess I'll just leave it at that; what that means for my future is still a little blurry, unlike the image that resulted!

But my opening sentence is perhaps directed today at all of us 60-plus-or-minuses because this winter has seemed to be a particularly unsettling one for many of us.  The core factors to any life (how to make a living, where to live, who and what we love, how well our physical bodies are faring) are taking on a new added edge heading toward "retirement."  Some of my friends' bodies are taking on a life (and journey) of their own, some friends are making radical living or job shifts, and some friends just seem to have lost their passion for life altogether.  The metaphor that comes to mind is that many of us just simply may have "graduated" from a phase of life and need to move on.  Is the discomfort coming from staying in the old classroom?  Everyone's situation is different, but it's interesting to think about.

But I do recommend the Tut "Infinite Possibilities 30 Day Project," even if you feel you have done too many of these "change your life" projects over the years.  It has turned out that the Day 3 exercise has been the catalyst for a near miracle for me.  It was, to write in great detail what it would be like to be in your new situation.  Well, I did a rather uninspired paragraph that day, but the next day, I started to write pages about what my life is like in the setting I've always "dreamed" of!  I mean, pages.  I am on page 10 and am still not done.  I can describe the house in detail, its garden, the neighborhood, the city, the people in my life, and almost every aspect of my life there.  It's almost -- at the risk of being too "woo woo" -- as if in fact I have been there all this time, not in opposite-land! It's so real and resonant, and I'm loving, loving, loving writing about it! 

I bought a lottery ticket yesterday.  I do that about once a year, when there's a particularly large payout.  And with great joy, I made a list of the ten friends and institutions who have been most loving, supportive or inspirational on my journey, to whom I will give a significant gift right at the top. It's a measure of my changing inner landscape that the whole prospect of giving away money makes me happy!  But of course, after giving these gifts, I will use the rest to return to the world I am describing in my writing.  I believe it's waiting for me.  May all of us 60-somethings find our real worlds over these next few years in the midst of all our challenges!  Let us not fear committing that paint to canvas!

Fun Project

It's a little belated to be making this recommendation, but better late than never.  I signed up a year or two ago for the Tut.com notes from the Universe, which are truly wonderful, day after day.  Encouraging and fun.  Well, their creator, Mike Dooley, is in the midst of something called the "Infinite Possibilities Project," a step-by-step, day-by-day process of starting the year 2016 off in the direction of your dreams.  Sometimes I feel like I've done these things till my eyes are crossed, so I waited a few days to see if it would be helpful, and it has been.  Enormously so.  You have to sign up for the daily notes in order to take part in it (they're free, how wonderful!) but definitely check it out!  The daily processes are quite short, so it would be easy to get caught up.  I'll report in soon about where it's taking me...

The Bottom Line

The other morning, I had one of those “aha” moments, which I must share on this Epiphany.

I know I am not the only person on the planet for whom “the bottom line” has been a trauma.  I guess it doesn’t matter whether you are making minimum wage; or making a reasonably good income but it all seems to be eaten up in basic living costs, college loans, or other obligations; are a millionaire with millions more in debt; or someone like me who, after years of hopeless under-earning in the wrong fields, and dramatic efforts to get back on track, has taken an intermission to try to regroup.  If, at regular moments, you have looked at your checkbook balance and seen pocket change, it is likely that you have felt that sick, hopeless feeling in the pit of your stomach.  This feeling has been a regular visitor my whole life.  A mere glance at that number always elicited a tuneful torrent of negative thoughts: “I’ll never get this right,” “I’m a hopeless case,” “I’ll never figure out how to make money doing something I actually like,” “I don’t get this game at all,” “I’ll never make it through this month,” “I give up,” etc.  Over time, law of attraction’s momentum took over and it became almost impossible to think new thoughts on this topic.  So of course, this area of my life never changed.  The notion of permanent comfort, wealth or abundance has seemed like a distant dream, no matter what short-term blessings came my way (which I have been certainly grateful for!) or what practical (or self-help) actions I took.

But it’s a new year and a new era, and when I heard that sorry chorus this time, I forced myself to go deeper, and finally realized that there was a larger fallacy under the surface, possibly the real reason for my incapacitation, and it might resonate with some of you. 

The fact is that somehow I allowed the number in front of me to define what God/the Universe/Source/the Goddess thought I was worth.  And if God consistently thought I was worth that, then that was all I was worth, and this basic ballpark was all I would ever manage to have on hand, whether I was working four jobs (which has been the case on occasion) or none.  Indeed, it did not make sense to work like a dog if I was still going to look at a checkbook regularly and find it dwindling.

I guess I’m throwing this out there as we debate the issue of raising the minimum wage: what we “earn” per hour (and what we see on our bank statement and/or our “net worth”) may be a reflection of what certain people think we are worth or what we have convinced ourselves we are worth. These figures may be a reflection of what our financial construct thinks we are worth or is willing to pay us for certain activities.  They may be a reflection of choices we have made, or how we have managed our money.  They may be a reflection of how well or poorly we have defined our best gifts and then figured out how to share them with the world and have the world share its riches back to us.  They may be a reflection of our having focused on “women’s work,” the arts or volunteering, activities that are some of life’s most important but which do not earn an hourly wage in our society.  They may be a reflection of how well or poorly we have played the “game.”  They may be a reflection of our fears, our inability to give and receive, being on the wrong side of a changing paradigm, or any number of other factors.  But these numbers are not a reflection of what we are ultimately “worth.”

Our worth – simply by being what Abraham-Hicks calls “the leading edge of Source energy” – is truly incalculable.  No matter what we “earn” and no matter what the financial world might call our “net worth,” in the eyes of God/the Universe/Source/the Goddess, we are worth-y.  We are off-the-scales rich and off-the-scales valuable to this expanding, growing Universe.  All of us who have been limping along for whatever reason are literally “buried treasure.”  We need to stand up, rejoice, and celebrate our amazingness! The bottom line may have enslaved our souls and sapped our joy, but we have survived, and this year it is time to come out from under the shadow of chronic fear and stand proudly!

The moment that we can stare at that number while simultaneously feeling genuine joy and love in our hearts, it will have lost its power to crush us.  In 2016, every time I look at “the bottom line” (whatever it may be at any moment), may I just smile and say, “gosh, good thing God sees me differently!” May I just smile and say, “gosh, good thing I am incredible!”  May all of us who have struggled in this area find a new inner spark of life that leads to outward relief and inspired action.  We are more alive and more blessed than a mere number.  This is our moment.

 

A New Year

Gosh, it’s rather daunting to try to write an appropriate post for the first of the year. 

However, I can say that the New Year started in classic “Liz” style.  On New Year’s Eve, while baking, I half heard a reference on public radio to the fact that birders pay special attention to the first bird they see on January 1.  So, Friday morning, wouldn’t you know the first bird I saw was a hawk, “Messenger,” according to my trusty Medicine Cards book (by Jamie Sams and David Carson.) The first new book to grab my attention in the new year has been No Ordinary Time: The Rise of Spiritual Intelligence and Evolutionary Creativity – A Book of Hours for a Prophetic Age.  Yeah, right down my alley.  The author, Jan Phillips, is a former Roman Catholic who uses the monastic hours as a vessel to present an expanded spiritual vision.  Sort of what New Age monks or nuns might pray over the course of a week.  The timeliness of this was quite extraordinary -- or not, if you believe that what you put out there will come back to you.  I have been continuing to perseverate over the seeming “disconnect” between my passion for my musical and spiritual tradition (Church of England) and my spiritual reality.  I keep trying to believe that there is a link, and it is reassuring to find someone who has found her own bridge.

I haven’t gotten far into the book. However, this short passage seems apt for the beginning of the year: “This is the beginning of a new day.  Each day you awaken to a canvas of twenty-four hours, ready for what only YOU can create.  What will you make of this gift you’ve been given?  What do you need to fulfill your mission?” (page 10.)

This may be enough for today. There’s a year’s worth of discernment just in those two questions.  May we all find answers to them! The third of my meaningful “firsts” on Friday was pulling a card from my Sacred Geometry deck (by Janosh, published by Sounds True.) These cards present fascinating computer generated crop-circle-type images with a single word/meaning.  The card that “picked me” for the year was “communication.”  That means, you can be fairly certain that I’ll weigh in on all this deep stuff every few days as 2016 progresses.  Thanks for being here with me!