Tag: 2020

Love in a World of Change

We are to be whole-makers of love in a world of change.

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Happy Holidays to All Readers…

It’s so hard to believe that the year is almost over. What a year it has been. The world was thrown a curve ball this year from out of nowhere. This year has been one that we have all had to do things we don’t like doing. Early on I started calling 2020 the ‘year from hell’. Sadly, it’s so easy to get caught up in the negative event of Covid-19, the negativity of a crazy and ridiculous presidential election, the negative news, the horrific racial tension, negative social media feeds and the negative attitudes around the country and the world. It is extremely hard to not become angry, bitter and self-centered through all of this. 

I would like to suggest to each one of you reading this that you take just a moment and stop! Just stop long enough to look back to the beginning of 2020 and how chaos began to descend. Being told by our states leaders to stay home and to wear a mask when we went out for essential things. After all the countless lives that have been lost and yet, if you are reading this… YOU are still here! I am still here! WE are still here! I can’t help but be grateful for life! Every time we have walked out our doors there has been a high chance of being exposed, possibly sickened with this ugly virus, but no…and if any of you have been exposed, or have had Covid-19 then I am certain you must be grateful that you walked through the experience and survived. 

Now, I would like to call this year of 2020, the ‘year of opportunity’. We have been given the opportunity the last few months to become more aware of others needs than our own. It was a chance for us to draw close, even though being separated. We have been given the opportunity to allow the creativity that we were each given at birth to surface. It was an opportunity for us to become less self-centered and to think of others more than ourselves! It allowed us the time to take a deeper look at ourselves. It was a time to begin to love like we have never loved before. Life is too easily taken for granted! 

A couple of years ago we subscribed to a daily email from a place called The Center for Action and Contemplation, run by a Franciscan Priest and his name is Father Richard Rohr. This may shock some of you that know us, but then it might not, but we have decided to begin a new journey from the traditional evangelical church and step into what is called “Christian Contemplation”. We have experienced, felt, seen, read and heard so much love from this contemplative walk that we can’t help but be drawn into it. The perspective of the contemplative way is simple… we cannot live a dual life. The dual life is our ego (what we personally create), and our true self (who God created). The contemplative way is the journey of having oneness with our creator God, so much so that we are not maneuvered by our ego. This is the simplest way, for me, to describe it. It’s been a beautiful journey and we are learning so much everyday!

I would like to share an excerpt from one of the recent subscribed to emails we receive from Richard Rohr. It wraps up what this whole season of Christmas is about, to me.

 “We can read the history of our 13.7-billion-year-old universe as the rising up of Divine Love incarnate, which bursts forth in the person of Jesus, who reveals love’s urge toward wholeness through reconciliation, mercy, peace, and forgiveness. Jesus is the love of God incarnate, the wholemaker who shows the way of evolution toward unity in love. In Jesus, God breaks through and points us in a new direction; not one of chance or blindness but one of ever-deepening wholeness in love. In Jesus, God comes to us from the future to be our future. Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love. Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving cosmos. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change.” (Sister Ilia Delio)

Our prayer for you, along with my family and for the new year coming, is that we be the ‘wholemakers of love in a world of change’. Let’s not be negative, contrary, ego-focused or dividers! Let’s allow the love of God to point us in a new direction…into the wholeness of divine love. Be open to a whole new perspective for the new year ahead! Surely it will be better than 2020!! 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year with lots of love, joy, peace and bright hope for 2021!!

Happy COVID-19 Thanksgiving

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A simple poem I wrote while reflecting on the past year…2020!

What a year this has been,

None of us comprehending how it would end.

In the beginning we saw,

A lot of our emotions becoming raw.

Our feelings of being controlled,

Brought out our inner trolls.

Wearing masks to cover our faces,

Made us wary of our personal spaces.

Our leaders fighting for the survival of their ego,

All the while, people dying and families letting them go.

COVID did it’s best to keep us apart,

But yet we are still close at heart.

Our historic Presidential election,

Seemed to hold captive all our attention.

Our nation teetered on the brink of a decision,

Deciding if we wanted ego or affection.

Now we come to Thanksgiving,

All being grateful for still living.

2020 will be a year of unbelievable sadness,

But 2021 will be a year of abundant gladness!

Let us look forward to beginning again,

With hope, with love and vision regained!

There is so much to be thankful for

But in 2021 there will be so much more!

Someone to be the Greatest Love

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We all know how 2020 started! It started out with the promise! The slate had been cleared of all 2019’s mistakes and regrets. A new year always gives us fresh hope, new perspective, new goals and desires. At the end of that year we look back and we can see if we were successful with our goals, and if our perspective on life changed at all. Little did we know that the year 2020 would literally be “the year from hell”.

Now as we hit October 2020 we have seen this year our nation has been catapulted to a place we’ve never been before. I, as I’m sure you, can remember when COVID-19 hit. We watched it rapidly spread all over the world. We have had over a million deaths, but thank God, also several million recoveries. We have seen the world basically shut down. Businesses close, schools close, airlines grounded, unemployment skyrocketed, suicide rates have risen to an alarming amount, domestic abuse cases rose, teenagers going crazy at home being separated from friends and our essential workers exposed and taking great risk on a daily basis. We have had to set our personal opinions aside and follow the direction of our government leaders to help protect each one of us, while they navigated the murky waters of this virus.

Beyond the pandemic, we have seen more land burned in one year than any other year in history. As I write this, it stands at over 4 million acres. Our forests have continued to burn with more fires starting on a daily basis. Is it climate change or is it the failure of our federal and local governments to take care of our forests? It’s both!! Our firefighters are exhausted and we are tired of the destruction, tired of the loss of life. We are tired of the relentless smoky air that penetrates the lungs. The amount of lives, homes, businesses, and the beautiful wineries lost in the Napa Valley is devastating.

As if these were not bad enough, then we had the killing of George Floyd. This began the racial protests in cities around the country. The rise of violence increasing in these hot spots has our police on edge, because they are the ones being protested against. They have become the enemy instead of our protectors. Mothers and fathers have lost children, and children have lost fathers and mothers etc.

To top the year off, we have a presidential election happening. Oh my God, are you freaking serious? Need I say anymore?

Daily we ask ourselves, how much more can we take as people, and as a nation? The world is wracked with grief from this pandemic, and our nation is reeling from racial violence, social injustice, destructive wildfires, lockdowns and a presidential election in the midst of a reign of chaos.

What do we do? How do we become a conduit of change? How can we continue in this seemingly never-ending chaos?

I suggest we look at the bigger picture, but yet a more refined picture. We see the world and what is currently happening. How many of us, stop and look at ourselves? I don’t mean look at what suffering we are going through and what is against us, etc. But, let us look at what who we are!

Deep down, in our true being, beyond our surface and superficiality, we are resilient people. We are strong. We are fighters. We are determined. We have all been victims of something, but we are also survivors. We are passionate. We are compassionate. We are people that care. We are a benevolent people. We are a people that know how to rise from devastation. We are a people that can rise above the destruction, the lofty ideals of mans ego, and rise above the chaos and know that this, too, shall pass. Why? Because we were all born to love. Yes, we can love those that disagree with us. We can love those that cause the violence, devastation and destruction.

My heart breaks for this country. For my grandchildren! What is the world going to be like when they become adults? This is my greatest fear right now. Will they have the freedoms we have now? Will this nation succumb to control? Will this nation stop caring about the climate, our forests, our poor and homeless etc.? There is much to be done to leave this world to our grandchildren in a much better place than it is now.

The only way to begin again is…to love!

To end this, I leave you with a few words from a song by James Blunt, The Greatest. These words are for our children and their children after them. But also, those of us who are still alive and kicking, well, it’s for us as well!

Be the young, the brave, the powerful

‘Cause the world is standing waiting

For someone to come and change it

Be the young, the brave, the powerful

‘Cause we need a soul to save us

We need someone to be the greatest love