Aligning with Grace

Pause. Breathe. Practice self care. That seems simple enough - right? Almost too simple. But I can't think of a better way to start my day. Or, a better way to get it back on track if the train of my life has derailed. In fact, just last night I was talking to a small group about something similar. I told them how I start my day. How I take two hours for a morning practice. I know. That sounds daunting. But I didn't start there. I started with ten minutes. Then twenty, and after I retired I added more time as I found myself more comfortable with it all. This time includes breathing, affirmations, mantras, asking guidance from a litany of saints and beloveds on the other side, tapping, spiritual reading, offering blessings, and doing Lovingkindness, and not in that order. Some days I spend more time with fewer things. I let my inner guidance select the morning rituals. But other days, I linger in silence, with eyes closed, and a hot cup of coffee in my hands. Yes, coffee. I used...

"You never step into the same river twice." ~ Heraclitus Nothing is ever the same. Everything changes. This river, that I have visited - at times nearly every day - over the space of a decade, is not the same. But then neither am I. I came to this river, suggested as a meeting place by a friend during a time of neediness and great pain and impending transitions. I came back, many a morning, feeling alone, having hit rock bottom, in the throws of deep depression, to do a rosary of spiritual practices: Lovingkindness meditations, Reiki chants, actual rosaries, prayers both traditional and spontaneous, the offering of blessings, and whatever else arose from the depths of my soul. For several years I came, almost daily. One morning, while sitting on a boulder by the riverbank, the river beckoned me to come inside. And so I did. I bought a kayak without even thinking about it, and spent a few years paddling upstream - repeating mantras, reciting prayers, while receiving...

We live in very interesting times indeed... So we are told, by intuitives, psychics and scientists alike... On Tuesday, I literally "felt the earth move under my feet," as Carole King once sang - and was ready for "the sky to come tumbling down," as I ran to the basement in a state of confusion, once I fully realized what was going on. My son reminded me, the basement is for tornadoes. You run outside if there is an earthquake. And truly, I've been through them before, but not in at least, three decades... This earthquake was significant, because I live in Virginia, about an hour from the epicenter. The quake registered a 5.9, and was felt up and down the Eastern seaboard. Today, we prepare for what may be the worst hurricane to hit some areas in decades. Is there a hidden message in all of this? Many can be drawn, but this simple quote that Marianne Williamson posted today, says it all for me: ‎ "When in the midst of outer chaos, se...