Fear

Fear: F-alse E-vidence A-ppearing R-eal.

The dream their is a liar

There is a spirit that roams the earth looking for victims to assail in the night, sleepy bodies and minds closing down for rest are subject to the most vile of attacks. I have nightmares and I always have, my deepest darkest fears come to life in dream land and I have woken in terror suddenly, as though plucked from the dream with a that is enough feeling. Before you feel too sorry for me, I have also woken in full laughter, delighted and wanting to go back in for more dreamy entertainment. Our dreams are crazy enactments of life, a wonky sideways glance of what appears real and really, isn't.

Taking courage promises unknowable rewards

What if life is like this wonky sideways world, with fears being the crazy things that stop us, pluck us from a beautiful reality that is waiting to be enjoyed and lived into? We all have them, fears I mean, don't we? We know it, what are we to do with it?

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7).

This reassurance is ours to claim and to hold as truth, with mighty surges of courage as evidence that fear can be and is, overcome each and every day of our lives, enlivened when we follow the urge that pulls us toward bravely going where we have not gone before. Where fear threatens to destroy, taking courage promises unknowable rewards yet to be claimed and bestowed. The spirit that roams is a dream thief, a liar that has been given much to much authorship, writing the story of many lives in ugly black heavy hearted smudged ink. God has given a spirit of power, love, sound mind: I claim these as my own, why wouldn't I?

The Power of Love, a Force from above, a sky scraping Dove. Take what is freely offered to you by God Almighty in this one life you get to live, no one can claim it for you.

Little Boxes

Little Boxes...its a song by Walk off the Earth. The video that goes with the lyrics of the song is quite ingenious and rather, insulting, depending on your point of view of course. Little boxes, made of ticky tacky, with cookie cutter humans following a pattern with very little deviation from a or THE norm...the song can be seen as mocking status and status quo or it can be viewed as a wake up call to the sleepy humans who's yesterday looked precisely the same as their today and likely their tomorrow, a life of clear boundaries and specific colours with lines of demarcation defining life as they know it and yet, sameness colours their world cardboard brown. I heard a great anacronym for fear~false evidence appearing real, and it is my belief and experience that this is the root cause of all stuckness, all life sucking habit forming day in day out sameness. We are all subject to the uncomfortable comfort of habit, routine, in fact the most successful people have one, a routine they follow that delivers results. The uncomfortable part is when we know that our routine is no longer serving us, is no longer satisfying the original reason we began or perhaps, when we recognize that it never really did. Fear, it is the way of a holding pattern, a belief held that if I change, if you change, our very survival is somehow threatened, or at the very least, life as we have known it will be forever after unrecognizable and damaged. We are not what we do and yet, we start looking and being the things that occupy our time...our days are numbered, counted off by a calendar and our minutes in time by a clock. Consciousness requires presence of mind and more poignantly, of heart. Each beat of the heart cries out for acknowledgement, place your hand over your heart and listen to the whispered longing of it crying out for more than mediocracy, more than half life lived, more. What is your longing? What do you live and breath for? Hey, you, I'm talking to YOU...what does YOUR heart want most for the rest of its blood pumping oxygen saturated life? If oxygen gives the breath of life, delivered by your ever beating heart, don't you owe your heart an audience? 

Not Done

One of my favourite writers is Napoleon Hill. As reader, I have the benefits of being spoon fed wisdom, gleaned over a lifetime and captured in writing. Napoleon Hills works are serving me well and neuropathways are being created in my mind as I digest and assimilate information that was written to hit the Truth buttons in my heart, pysche, soul, and stomach, to complete this metaphor. Definiteness of Purpose is a theme that I have lost and found on the bunny trail of life and today, and yesterday, I had the words "I'm not done with you yet" echoing in my head and reverberating throughout my being. The words came for me and at me, mostly at me, that my work with others is not done, there is more and I am to stay the course until He, God Almighty, tells me otherwise. This feels like a repeat, and as I write, it feels like another repeat and I have to stop myself from searching back in time into previous blogs to check for redundancies. Ether: the fifth and highest element after air and earth and fire and water; was believed to be the substance composing all heavenly bodies. The Voice inside my head and heart, it is my ether, it is the highest element seen and felt and touched with faith as the sixth sense that guides me to its existence...it is my faith in things unseen that has me knowing that the repeat is real and essential, that there is something in the message that I must pay attention to...Thine will, not mine Lord, this is my humbling, my knowing that the Voice, heard inside of my head comes from another, The Holy Spirit that lives within me...I am not Holy, I am not God, I did not make me and I know the difference between the Divine and the divinely created...I fall into the second category and I am quite content with this status of second, of follower, of being clay crafted into human form by a Mighty Hand. He is purposeful and definite and He calls me to be the same, definitely on purpose until I hear the words "well done, good and faithful servant". He has a message for each of us, it may be a repeat or something new, only listening ears and heart can tell, open yours today and Love will lead the way Home. 

True Blue Michelle Young

I have a friend whose eyes flash, they are deep pool blue, true blue. She is the most elegant and thoughtful person I have ever know and her focus is always on relationship. She shares her life, her insights, her gleaned wisdom and observations, with the intention of edifying the one with whom she is relating~she is masterful with her communication skills. I am her student and writing this brings a smile to my face because she deserves much acclaim as a model of femininity and strength and when she reads this, she will blush deeply for being acknowledged so. She isn't shy or demurring, there is no facade or playing at being someone else, she speaks truth, lives truth, loves herself and others and it shows. Now before you start to think she is all sugary sweet, re read the intro sentence to this blog...her eyes flash, as in lightening flash. Yeah, that's the part I really dig, because when she gets all fired up, her eyes speak volumes and once, just once, after all these years, her opinion came at me unrestrained and unchecked. I sit here grinning and contemplating my next line, appreciating how close we have gotten...she apologized today for giving her opinion, unsolicited, something she is loathe to do (unsolicited opinion giving I mean). Funny that, I consider her to be one of my wise whispers and am always grateful for her personality, presence and perceptive discernment. Happy sad mad disappointed irritated angry frustrated jovial playful sarcastic sardonic seriously fun, give them all to me all wrapped up in one neat pretty true blue eyed lady named Michelle Young and I'm a happy camper. They don't make them like they used to~Michelle is a throw back, an anachronism in this me first society. She models the good life of integrity and commitment to the betterment of society, aren't I a lucky gal for having her in my life? I love you Michelle Young, YOU are unique, hug kiss and long lashed flirty girl eye batting of love sent your way today, with abiding affection, LGB

Submission

Submission to God, means love at all costs. Two definitions are called for here: the act of submitting; usually surrendering power to another; the condition of having submitted to the control by something or someone else. I have resisted submission, I have rebelled against it, I have vainly stubbornly donkey like objected to the power and control of another, much to my shame and detriment. Man against God, it makes me laugh to think of the ridiculousness of the concept. I smirk as I write, considering the folly and the traps that have been set before me, the ones my ego so willingly indulge for the sake of self aggrandizement! Ha...an ego fix lasts but a moment, only to be replaced rapidly with a need for another ego adrenalin hit. My word and the intention attached to it for the year 2014 was surrender and lo and behold, I have gleaned a huge lesson this very night, the day of my birth counting backward 48 years. Follow Spirit, follow Spirit, I will lead, all you need do is follow Me...this takes me through and down and around dark corridors of unknowns and it is the Light I follow, the whisper breathed into my ear, the tug on my heart that draws me inextricably along, a lamb or in my case, a rambunctious goat, heeding the call of The Shepard. I thought my work was heavy, that lifting souls up to God was part and parcel of my duties, childlike I thought maybe God needed my help, this is the funniest part of it all! He chooses, He changes Hearts and He cherishes His created far more than this frail and ego laden goat ever can or will. Phew, what I relief. If I truly believe in God, The One God of The Bible, I trust that The Beatitudes are His gift to me and that He has the whole world in His hands and my little hands, well they are raised up, palms open, receiving what I want, need, no gift held back from me. It feels good to submit, I am free this night to Love without fear that I will fail...failure is a given for me, but never for my Maker, He leads, I follow. 

Mercy

I have many friends to whom the gift of mercy has been bestowed. The word mercy is defined as: kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly. The could be treated harshly part of the definition is the course of action option when the proverbial buttons have been pushed or the last straw has been placed on a tall heep or someone gets on my/your last nerve. My husband has a saying, I have a lot of patience and very little tolerance, I am learning what this means. I listened to a powerful message yesterday and what stuck is this observation "poisoning relationship with self"~this is the collateral damage that can be done when my need to be right, heard, seen, understood, needed, wanted superimposes itself onto my relating to another. I poison myself, the other and the relationship when I fail to actually relate to the other, connect with that person or those people across from me, beside me, around me. Occupation with self in the presence of others can be an irritant that drives people away...we are all guilty or have been, of some form of self absorbtion, even obsession that has made another so uncomfortable as to cause a retreat. Mercy, it stays, it is a gift of the Spirit, it is the undergirding, the support beam, the pillar that strengthens the structure of relationship when one or the other of the would be relators deviates from connecting and moves into solipsism. The bonding agent of knowing the character and heart of another can increase the mercy quotient and love unseen by the receiver, an invisible holding of the one who has fallen into self indulgence and has forgotten the how to's of relating, is given the gift of mercy, forgiveness for not noticing that two have become just one, just me when I can't see past myself. As I said in the beginning, I know many with this gift of mercy and it is the "Let all that you do be done with Love" that 1 Corinthians 16:14 speaks of, a love that covers all sin and misunderstanding and looks to the grand scheme of things seen and unseen, known and yet to be known...Mercy carries me as a babe in arms. This is dedicated to many this day as they love the ones they are with, and to Paul Byers in particular, he is my one, and I love him ever so.