Aligning with Grace

A season ends, and so it must if it is to yield its turf to a new one... The days are getting shorter, and the darkness lingers longer into the morning... The warmer days will soon acquiesce to the onslaught of cooler and crisper days... This is simply the nature of things... And here I am, two weeks after having returned from the mountains out west, and still my head seems to be up in those clouds... So many projects and plans had I laid out for this summer, and nothing turned out as I had imagined. I lay out some more plans for the coming months, curious as to whether defined goals will be met. But in the final analysis, does it matter? Life is about the journey - not the destination - you'd think I would have learned that by now. And it is certainly always about the lessons - so many of them - always arriving in constant succession - a never ending flow and stream... Thus we reflected, my friend and I, as we lunched and sipped on dark rich coffee - our conversation...

I spend a week in the mountains out West, and even though I have difficulty breathing at high altitudes, my spirit is awash in its energy... Meditations are deep and expansive, and there is a clarity that comes in high elevations, as if one could reach up a finger to the sky like E.T. and touch the very presence of the Divine... At times, I sit barefoot on the grass, lost in exquisite meditation. The air is fresh and light, in more ways than one, yet certainly devoid of all the oxygen I need... Over and over again, the words of the Psalmist come to mind as I behold the breathtaking beauty of the mountains:  "I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth..." ~ Psalm 121 NRSV There is a power here that I feel, and it is the inherent power to move mountains - and to do and be - anything and everything... There are insights and intuitions that are granted and which tumble out easily from ...

I read an article this week that has made me reflect very deeply on the choices we make and the effects that negativity have on us and those around us. Yesterday, I subbed for a friend's yoga class, and in my centering, I spoke to the students about how heavy this summer has been - so many tragedies - and most of them resulting from the direct expression of hatred on somebody's part. The essay I read explained that in our world of duality, negative and positive energies are more accurately redefined as destructive and creative energies. If you are an individual that is relatively open on an emotional, psychological, and spiritual level, you are more apt to be affected by negativity than others around you. Negative energy is insidious and destructive in its essence. But even though you as an individual may be very much affected by the negative energy of others, it is important to note that it affects the sender even more so. This essay also pointed out that hatred and fe...

Sometimes, messages come to us in the strangest of ways... In something someone says to us... In something that we read... In the presence of an animal... And sometimes, in all three... And that was the morning I had, so I share these messages with you, hoping they may yield an insight or two for you... I began my morning by reading and sharing this poem by Mary Oliver: Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond  So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, always it is a surprise when her smoke-colored wings open and she turns from the thick water, from the black sticks of the summer pond, and slowly rises into the air and is gone. Then, not for the first or the last time, I take the deep breath of happiness, and I think how unlikely it is that death is a hole in the ground, how improbable that ascension is not possible, though everything seems so inert, so nailed back into itself -- the muskrat and ...