To Risk Change

I awaken drained and exhausted, after several days of sadness and heaviness for the state of affairs in this world, and the perception of my own.

Everything in the news seems to consist of a blockage - an impediment for communication, compromise and collegiality - a challenge that is seemingly insurmountable, and yet in my heart of hearts, I know it is not true...

Did not Gandhi once exhort us to be the change we wanted to see?

Messages come from so many different places, and I receive two that are particularly notable, one as I finish the book that I am reading, "Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy," by Anne Lamott:

"...Things that grow are what change everything. 

Moments of compassion, giving, grief, and wonder 

shift our behavior, get inside us and change realms 

we might not have agreed to change... 

The world keeps going on. 

You can have another cup of coffee 

and keep working on your plans. 

Or you can take the risk and be changed..."

And then this:

"When we meditate, we are training the mind

to stop feeding a pain pattern."

~ Ruth King

And:

"Anything that leaves you more fearful, 

more isolated, more disconnected from other people, 

more full of judgment or self-hatred, is not of God, 

does not follow the Rule of Love - 

and you should stop doing it."

~ Mark Yanconelli

My angels and guides send me the messages I need to hear as they embrace me, and give me solace.

On this threshold of Great Change - of stepping out into the abyss of the Unknown - into unchartered territory in more ways than one, I can choose to change: Who I am, what I dwell on, how I perceive things, how I am being prodded to grow - what I think, who I spend I time with - and most especially how I choose to spend it. 

Or, I can choose to remain at a standstill - suffering - clinging to the past - to a version of reality that is only mine and no one else's...

I can choose to step through the threshold trusting, or hover at it's doorstep clinging to a fabric that no longer enfolds me or protects.

I can choose to do all that is asked of me with compassion and mercy - or not.

This morning I sigh as I drink my coffee and go for my walk, at this very tall order, but like Martin Luther, five hundred years before me, I cannot do otherwise...