Archives for category: Spirituality

Courage to Enjoy

June 7, 2016 //

Rain returns today, dropping a gray curtain on the colors of spring. The drumbeat of the daily news fans the flames of our fears. Friends and family face challenges to health and well-being.

Sometimes we forget what accompanies the shadows of the world: the rain brings water to nourish the land; love waits patiently for our permission to shine forth; a deeper well of meaning waits only for us to lower our pail.

Words of Fra Giovanni in a letter to a friend written in the 16^th century come to mind. May they help each of us today find courage to seize the moment, whatever its shadows, and find the peace that passes conventional understanding.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see – and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look! …

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty – beneath its covering – that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Categories Inspiration, Personal Growth, Spirituality

The Good Old Days

April 28, 2016 //

I have returned home from a week in Colorado filled with friends, clients and family. The blessing of these relationships brought to mind a line from Carly Simon’s song – these are the good old days.

How easy it is to spend time looking back to what our life used to be or anticipating what might lie ahead. Given my age, I confess to a certain amount of dread for what the coming years will bring.

This focus has been fueled in part by Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal which I have read in preparation for an upcoming discussion with friends from high school days. Written by a doctor, it is a frank account of the aging process and death and ways we and our culture deal with both.

In Still Here, a book by Ram Dass completed after he experienced a debilitating stroke, I found a gentle reminder that has bolstered my spirits and resolve to be here now.

As the Tibetan teaching instructs, we learn not to “invite” the future into our thoughts before its time, or to cause ourselves unnecessary discomfort, for just as the past traps us in memories, the future traps us in anticipation.

In the popular idiom of days gone Carly Simon’s classic sums it up well.

We can never know about the days to come

But we think about them anyway

And I wonder if I’m really with you now

Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation is makin’ me late, is keepin’ me waitin’…

And tomorrow we might not be together

I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways

So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now

And stay right here

‘cause these are the good old days.

Categories Growing Older, Personal Growth, Relationships, Spirituality

Our Special Dance

March 31, 2016 //

This morning two thoughts met in my mind and began to dance. They extend their hands to you in hopes you will join them in composing your day, especially if you are one who is searching for your life’s purpose.

The first thought comes from yesterday’s meditation in Joan Borysenko’s Pocketful of Miracles. It reminds us to pay attention to the “still, small voice within.” It is that voice which holds the clues to our unique calling in the universe. Our task is to pay attention to it and dance with it.

Patience is related to authentic spiritual courage. It is the deep faith that the universe is unfolding as it should, even when things are not happening according to our own plans or timetables. All we can do is act in integrity, in accordance with our priorities and the guidance of the still, small voice within. After that, we must surrender all attachment to the results.

The companion theme comes from M. J. Ryan’s anthology, A Grateful Heart. As the father of four children who dance to the music of their own callings, the image has particular resonance.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost, the world will not have it.” So said dancer Martha Graham…we pray that each of us find our unique life force and express it as fully as we possibly can.

May each of us tune in to the still, small voice within and embrace the gifts of our special dance in the world.

Categories Coaching, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Gateways to Transformation

March 24, 2016 //

This past week I was in touch with friends who faced an unexpected turn in their life’s path. One of them, a survivor of a previous severe cancer, confronts a newly discovered and different form of the disease. The second friend battled a blaze that could have dealt his small family business a damaging blow.

My heart goes out to each of them. Having lived through a couple of life altering challenges of my own, I am aware of the depths of darkness that can accompany the initial news. I have also known the light of new life that is possible from their lessons.

With synchronous pull this week I was drawn into David Whyte’s entry on Disappointment in his book Consolations. While many of us think of disappointments as frustrating interruptions in the day’s trajectory, his use of the word focuses on our life threatening and life opening distresses.

Our attitude toward our circumstances and our effort are the only dynamics we control, and the choices we make facing our travails define who we are. May these words from David Whyte bolster each of us in confronting our disappointments.

Disappointment is inescapable but necessary…a friend to transformation, a call to both accuracy and generosity in the assessment of our self and others, a test of sincerity and a catalyst of resilience.

Disappointment is just the initial meeting with the frontier of an evolving life, an invitation to reality, which we expected to be one particular way and turns out to be another, often something more difficult, more overwhelming and strangely, in the end, more rewarding.

Categories Personal Growth, Spirituality

Appalachian Returning

March 10, 2016 //

The temperature reached 60 yesterday cutting short the maple sugaring season. The snow retreats before the ascending sun. The earth reappears. It’s early yet – no doubt there will be more “weather” this month – but the days pronounce spring’s imminent arrival.

The return of spring renews the promise that below the surface of an apparently frozen landscape life’s energy continues to create its abundance. There is the assurance that we will surface from our winters of disappointment or arrested expectation. We are meant to be where we are – on track to resume our growth into the fullness of who we are becoming.

For me spring’s arrival is accompanied by the music of Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring and the Shaker hymn on which it is based. Stretching from Maine to Georgia the Appalachians have provided the backbone for my life’s journey. On its shoulders Peggy and I have worked and played and launched our family. Its hills have schooled us in the lessons of self-sufficiency, community and interdependence. Now in our later years we return home to its gentle slopes and their essential truths.

For your meditation today I suggest you listen to Copeland’s composition reflecting on the return of spring in your own life and the message of the Shaker hymn.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free.

‘Tis the gift to come round where we ought to be.

And when we find ourselves in the place just right

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.

To turn, turn, will be our delight

Till by turning, turning, we come round right.

Categories Growing Older, Overview, Personal Growth, Spirituality

An Extra Day

March 3, 2016 //

Have you ever wished you had more time to finish all that is on your plate? What if you had an extra day? Would you spend it any differently? I doubt most of us would. Case in point: this year is leap year. According to the rules we have created, every four years we grant ourselves one more day. So, did you use this past Monday any differently? Or did you pretty much follow your routine for the first work day of the week?

Whatever the amount of time granted us in life, we control our attitude and our effort toward it. Suppose you allocate 15 minutes per day differently. Depending on your goal you may devote that time to rest, a relationship, meditation, prayer, exercise or working on that project you are postponing.

Here’s the calculation: assuming you allocate 8 hours for sleep and hygiene, you have 16 waking hours each day. 15 minutes X 365 days = 5,475 minutes; divided by 60 minutes = 91+ hours; divided by 16 waking hours = 5+ days. That’s five times more than leap year!

Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that it all begins with focusing on the present moment.

To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Peace is all around us – in the world and in nature – and within us – in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.

What practice will you begin or resume today?

Categories Performance, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Awakening the Energies of Love

February 25, 2016 //

How do we awaken to love? No doubt our answers begin with our life experiences and our age. We may feel it first in flames of infatuation. We may live it daily in the burn of our passions and committed relationships. We may give it in the glowing coals of our compassion.

In her book Awakening the Energies of Love Anne Hillman explores a more profound theme launched by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s quote.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.

Our ancestors’ taming of fire symbolizes our species’ differentiation from all others.

Propelled by a yearning that ran counter to their bodies’ counsel and to the time-tested wisdom of their clan, they took an enormous risk. Instead of running away from fire, they engaged it…

Eons later we find ourselves in another defining era. Our technology links us as a global tribe, while our fear and greed threaten our very existence. Led to listen to our better angels and our expanding consciousness, Anne challenges us to engage our capacities for transformation, the energies of love.

We too stand at an evolutionary juncture…a longing to be somehow more than we are… Our longing – our yearning – is part and parcel of the song of the soul, and it has always beckoned us toward a future that is not ours alone. We may choose to follow it by ourselves, but that we follow it matters to generations; for just as the embers of the first fire ignited the power of language, those of the second will ignite the power in our hearts.

I highly commend Anne’s book.

Categories Inspiration, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Do you dare open?

January 28, 2016 //

Are you one who defers or deflects? I am too busy. I am not ready. I am not capable. I am not worthy. I am afraid too many of us have bottled up our real passions or dreams and put them on hold for some future “when the time is right.”

If you are one of those folks, call yourself out and resolve to make a change. With a new year just beginning, what better time than now? The following poem by Judith Gass may help inspire a break through to “the full and magnificent tides of your own longing.”

Why are you waiting to begin your life?

Do you think the world must care and come soliciting?

Listen to the knocking at the door of your own heart

It is only faint because you have not answered

You have fooled yourself with preparations

Time left laughing while you considered possibilities

Wake up, you have slept long enough

Wake up, tomorrow may be too late

When you finally dare open the door

Your life will begin arriving

Cautiously at first unbelieving that the gate

So long locked against the tide has finally been opened

Then with swells of neglected dreams

Then with waves of joyful revelation the sea will follow

You will be swept by the full and magnificent tides of

Your own longing

That no one else can give you

That no one else can claim.

Categories Coaching, Inspiration, Performance, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Choose the Good Ones

December 31, 2015 //

Are you someone who makes New Year’s resolutions? And keeps them? I have not been one to do so. However, this year is different. I am sharing my process in case you’re on the verge.

It began with an image that surfaced on a run Christmas day. Water running off the hillside from spring like temperatures and recent rains created a melodic chorus, and my thoughts flowed with it. My resolve: to live more mindfully in the moment.

Given major conflicts in the world and the politics of the year ahead, I know I will be triggered often. Committed to deepening my spiritual path and knowing that the only things we control in life are our attitude and our effort, I identified three prompts to sustain my intention.

Pause for a question. When my buttons are pushed or I am perplexed, I will ask myself, “what wants to happen here?” In the instant of confusion or frustration this liberating question from transformational coach, Alan Seale invites answers that propel us out of our conventional responses into new and more expansive possibilities.

Look for the light. It is usually easier to dwell on our shortcomings and those of others rather than recognize and honor our respective gifts. The festivals of faith surrounding the solstice provide a seasonal reminder, as do the familiar words, “you are the light of the world.”

Be accountable. To help me hold myself accountable I will wear a wristband to recall my promise when the dark side appears. I have chosen one imprinted with Mike Dooley’s message, Thoughts become things – choose the good ones. I am also going public with my intention! Hence this post.

Are you making any resolutions for 2016? Can we support each other?

Categories Performance, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Forgotten Truths

November 19, 2015 //

The week has brought another wave of terror. Amplified by instantaneous images and incomplete story lines, the stark reality that millions of people live with daily penetrates the walls that distance and privilege have built for the perceived safety of others.

The root of all hate is fear, the weapon of choice that perpetrators of every ilk employ, be they sick individuals or religious and political extremists.

Love waits at the other end of the continuum, the wellspring of personal worth and our most intimate relationships. Love is the progenitor of compassion and the golden rule that summons the best in our connections among communities, cultures, nations and our planet home.

May each of us pause to revisit the core of our being that is nurtured by love and then in our own unique way raise our voice to speak our NO to fear and our YES to compassion.

Words by Daniel Martin from Life Prayers may help guide us to reclaim truths that we ignore at our peril.

We who have lost our sense and our senses – our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our Earth and injuring ourselves; we call a halt.

We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the Earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.

We declare an Earth Holy Day, a space of quiet: for simple being and letting be; for recovering the great forgotten truths.

Categories Personal Growth, Relationships, Spirituality