One disadvantage of writing a blog post early in the morning, before hearing the news, is that you can sound absolutely clueless. Such was the case in my last post, which I wrote before hearing about the attacks in Brussels. There are so many tragic aspects to these events, not the least of which is their capacity to drain all of our joy, blunt our good news, or the time we could be spending improving the world. There is so much to say about this event, and choices to make and things to learn in this process of writing a regular blog. I hope you know that even when I am not addressing the news directly, these events have a big impact on the soul level and, eventually, in my writing.
But there is another topic trying to express itself today, which may not be totally unrelated. For a few years, I have been a proponent of bringing one's dreams to life, even in a limited way, immediately. It can seem like the right thing to do to work on a multi-year schedule, and plan step-by-step -- and for many people this may work. Yet that can lead to the despair of thinking a dream is too "big" to achieve. Finding some smaller immediate way to achieve it is very powerful. If you want to open a bed-and-breakfast, why not invite your best friends over for the weekend and treat them like royalty? If you want to live on a tropical island but you live in northern New England, pull out the deck chair to the side of a frozen lake in January, put on the sunglasses, and drink champagne! If you want to go on retreat, take the journal to a coffee shop. If you want a fancy red car, rent one for the weekend. You get the picture. Don't let people tell you this is getting you nowhere. It is getting you somewhere -- it's like putting a flag in the ground to claim your dream. It's aligning you with it.
So it's in that spirit that I just managed, through several blessings and synchronicities, to get myself over to England for a short-ish visit, even in the midst of events across the Channel. Upon arriving yesterday morning, I took the tube into London and by late afternoon was attending choral evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. Today, I will attend a service at King's College, Cambridge. I am, literally, right in the middle of my world. There are so many joys to being here, so many reasons for gratitude, but one of them is throwing out the ticking clock. You're in your dream today, this minute, be it looking at the fan vaulting and listening to the choir, or sipping the champagne, or writing some true words, or lovingly serving your best friends. That is all that matters for today. Being here now. I know somebody else said that, but since I'm not sure who, I'll say it too! And when you plant your flag, I believe it gets easier and easier to string together the smaller miracles into a bigger one.
