Category Archives: Essential Journey

Hope: the ultimate un-guide. You are worth the world.

Posted on by
9

Hope banner copy

I read the title of the email waiting in my Inbox:  $197 course given for free.

Free?  I hope it’s true. Or is it too good to be true?

I hesitate before clicking the link. A part of me is fearful clicking the link will inundate my Inbox with more messages about free courses on the secret to living the life of your dreams, on losing weight without lifting a finger, on curing some incurable disease just by focusing your mind on one idea.

I click.

I am curious. Which is what the title of the email was hoping to trigger, my curiosity.

I read the email and sigh. Yup. Too good to be true.

I delete it.

And continue on secretly hoping the next email truly will contain the secret to ever-lasting happiness, to uber health, to ultra living.

Hope lives eternal in promises to make the secret of life an easy-peasy elixir you only have to drink once to get a world of bounty.

It just ain’t that way.

Life by its very nature is complicated.

The secret to living it fully is to accept it’s neither complicated nor easy. Life just is what it is. Our job is to live each  moment without judging its difficulty or ease, celebrating in each moment without fearing there will not be a next.

At least, that’s what my mind told me this morning as I drifted in and out of meditative silence.

You don’t think about one heart beat flowing into the next, pausing in between each beat in fear there won’t be a next.

You don’t draw one breath in, exhale out, fearing where the next one will come from.

At least, not until you can’t, feel your heartbeat, breathe in the next breath, my mind whispered to me in the silence. Then, and only then, do you hope for another.

Hope is the silent breath that promises the next will come without fear.

Hope is the absence of fear.

Hope rides in on trust.

Fear erodes it.

I hoped this morning when I clicked that email that my spam filters would prevent any mishaps.

Fear, and perhaps a touch of past experience, said that wasn’t going to happen.

So, perhaps it wasn’t hope I was counting on. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking.

It can be easy to confuse the two. Hope lives in my heart. Wishful thinking in my denial of what is true.

I hope this makes sense. I’m letting the thoughts flow as effortlessly as my breath drawing in and out of my body.

I wish there was an easy answer.

To life. Love. Living.

Oh, my mind whispers. There is.

Live it for all your worth without fearing your worth, your value, your truth.  You are worth the world.

I hope that’s true.

I smile.

I know it is.

True. For everyone.

 

 

HOPE: The Ultimate Un-guide. There is hope in hopelessness

Posted on by
14

Hope banner copy

It was a week of hearts breaking open, sadness pouring out, sorrow lifting up. It was a week of self-love pushing away hatred, peace embracing anger, forgiveness cascading over resentment.

It was a week of hopelessness transforming into hope, of possibility awakening in the depths of despair, of new life breathing deeply into the darkness that once held hearts frozen in fear.

It was a week coaching at Choices.

And I am grateful.

I am often asked why I volunteer so much time coaching at Choices.

There is so much value I receive by staying involved with the program.

It makes my life and all my relationships better.

It keeps me using the tools I’ve learned through the program so that old habits don’t break down new ways of living life on the far side of my comfort zone.

It helps me stay on track, accountable, and present in my life.

It gives me a chance to give back.

It keeps me connected to people who want to create a world of difference in their lives and in the world around them.

And then, there is the very real and simple reason I experienced this week.

It reminds me that there is hope and possibility for change in every life. It reminds me that in a world filled with darkness, there is light.

On Thursday afternoon last week, I received a call from a former co-worker at the homeless shelter where I used to work. He told me someone I know had been killed. A suspicious death, the police termed it. The investigation into who or what killed him continues but for Ryan Delve, all hope of finding another path to live his life without fearing each step would lead him deeper into the darkness of homelessness died on Thursday, June 4, 2015.

It was the end of his road.

Ryan was an artist. I wrote of him last year when he participated in an art show I helped organize and he chose to donate a painting to the silent auction we held in support of Alpha House, a shelter here in the city.

Like all of us, Ryan had hopes and dreams and a fervent desire to live better, live well, live beyond his past.

Like all of us, Ryan knew what it felt like to lose at love, to be hurt by another, to be lost in confusion of where to go next.

Like all of us, Ryan knew joy, laughter, sadness, despair, anger, fear, peace, love…

Like all of us, Ryan lived his human condition as best he could, doing whatever he could to get from A to B with the tools and resources he had available.

Like few of us, Ryan knew the homeless experience. He lived it. Every day. Even when he was housed briefly over the past year, the shadow of homelessness clouded his world, luring him back to its darkness.

When I heard the news of Ryan’s passing I stood in the hallway outside the room where the trainees were deeply into a process and felt the heaviness and futility of homelessness sink into my heart as quickly as a stone falls to the bottom of a well. My heart felt heavy, tight, constricted.

I asked a friend who was also coaching to chat with me for a moment. I needed to make sense of the senselessness of it all.

My friend R.A. asked if he could say a prayer for Ryan. I said yes.

In that moment of standing with my eyes closed, holding loving thoughts of Ryan and all those who live in the darkness of homelessness in my thoughts, peace descended.

It is true. I could not change the path that Ryan was on, just as I cannot change the paths of the thousands who live on the streets, in shelters, and on the margins of our society.

I can add my best to what we as a community are doing to make a difference to change the trajectory of homelessness into possibility. I can hold space for those who are walking the streets to find their way back home.

And, I can walk every day in peace, love, harmony, joy.  I can create space for possibility to arise, for hope to stay present, for change to happen. I can add my best to what so many others are doing to ensure we do not lose more people to homelessness.

And to do that, to hold space, to hold onto possibility, to create opportunities for change and not become burdened by the heaviness and sadness of homelessness, I coach at Choices.

At Choices I am reminded every day that there is hope, possibility and light in the darkness.

I am reminded that hearts can break open in love, that anger can flow free through forgiveness and that darkness always gives way to light.

I believe we can end homelessness, just as I believe we can create a better world for everyone.

To do my part, I must give my best. To give my best, I must surround myself with people who remind me every day to find value in all things, to live my truth and stand up for what I believe in.

We are all one in our human condition and when we share our light together, when we shine as one, as brightly as we can, the darkness fades, hope arises and possibility opens up in all our lives.

 

 

 

 

Day 1. The Ultimate Un-guide to Hope. Surrender all fear.

Posted on by
6

Hope copy

Last Friday I made a commitment to myself to explore the question, “What is the more I seek?”

For the past five days, I have meditated on the word, “surrender”, the first one on the list I felt were all inclusive of my seeker’s journey. (surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love)

When I began, I had no predetermined idea of the right or wrong way for me to take this journey. Others have shared their thoughts and ideas, their opinions and suggestions. I am grateful for their words and contributions. You have each cast light upon my path. Each helped me see more deeply into the unknown of this exploration.

It is, first and foremost, a journey into the unknown.

When I began, there was lots I knew, but to delve deeper beneath my known’s, I had to trust I was safe following my intuition, allowing myself to be vulnerable without fearing judgement, criticism or change.

It has been fascinating to be the observer and the explorer. To watch not just where I step, but how I step. To let go of stepping and to hold onto nothing.

I did give myself a timeline. Five days per word, each day a map of my journey leading me deeper over the edge of reason into the unknown.

What is the more I seek?

It is not a thing. It is not an object or objects.

It is a feeling, a sense of knowing, wonderment, awe. A way of being. Present. Alive. Open.

It is the journey itself, not the answer I seek.

It is the art of holding on to nothing to have everything.

It is the gift of being open to all the Universe has to offer and receiving it gifts without fearing its many gifts and offerings.

Hope banner copy

Today, I begin again with hope.

I read the definition and I laugh out loud.

Hope means to trust.

Trust?

Seriously. The Universe has a sense a humour and it loves to play its games with me.

Trust is my deep issue.

Trust is what I must always breathe into.

I hope.

I hope I can.

I hope I can do it. Know it. Be it. Have it. See it. Hear it. Feel it.

I hope I don’t get in my own way.

I hope I don’t forget to laugh. Cry. Leap. Jump. Dance and spin about.

I hope I remember to breathe into trusting the Universe and letting go fear.

I hope I remember to surrender… my fear of trusting.

Nameste.

Day 5: Surrender — the ultimate un-guide. All is what it is.

Posted on by
10

surrender banner 1 copy

I am sitting in some sort of bleacher amidst a crowd of people. Someone, I think it’s my Grade 2 teacher, tells everyone to split into sides.

But first, we have to go clean up the staff room. There was a party and it’s a mess. Empty trays of cake. Beer bottles. Paper plates and cutlery all over. It’s the beer bottles that get me. We don’t allow alcohol on the premises. Why would there be beer bottles everywhere?

And then, as can only happen in a dream, I’m back at the bleachers sitting on the furthest left hand side of the group on the right. They’re the introverts. I want to be with them.

“But you like people,” someone says to me.

I do! I love people.

I love my alone time too. Being with people too much makes me grouchy, I tell them. I need to find time for me.

Again, as only can happen in a dream, one person is singled out. We are invited to decorate them with reams of ribbons and cloth the organizer gives us.

We begin. She looks rather pretty, I think, but one of our team keeps telling me I can’t put the ribbons around her head. But they look good there, I protest, but to no avail.

Stop it, they say.

The woman we’re wrapping in ribbon keeps moving to the edge of the ledge we’re standing on. She turns to face us. With her back to the void behind her, she steps away from us and closer to the edge.

Stop it, I call out. Stop it. Get away from the edge.

She laughs and steps closer and closer.

I can’t watch. I turn away from where she stands at the edge and close my eyes.

And I awaken.

Surrender. 

The delicate balance of holding on/letting go and trusting in the all that is as what it is.

Surrender.  The liminal space between the known and unknown. Seen and invisible. Heard and silent. Felt and perceived.

Lean out far enough from what I know and I encounter all I do not know, all that is unknown yet perceived, felt, wished for, dreamed of.

I do not fear the unknown. I fear stepping off the edge. I fear that moment of letting go, releasing where I am and trusting gravity, the universe, myself to hold me safe.

Like flying, it is not being in the air I fear. It is that moment of lifting off, of trusting the shiny silver bullet of metal encasing me to hold me safe as we let go of the earth and take off.

I do not fear the unknown. I fear gravity will let me down.

I breathe.

There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to turn away from.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am safe, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am at risk of falling.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am complete, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am not whole.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am love, loved and loving, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am not worthy.

Surrender.

There is nothing to fear when I let go and surrender to the beauty, majesty and mystery of who I am in a world of wonder and awe.

There is nothing to fear when I surrender my resistance to trusting the Universe to turn up for me. The Universe cannot turn away. It cannot not turn up. It is and in its being it cannot be anything other than what it is. I can choose to see it as a fearful, distrustful and dark place, or I can choose to journey with my eyes and arms and heart wide open to embrace this world of beauty, majesty and mystery shimmering all around me.

Surrender.

All is possible when I leap fearlessly into my resistance of letting go and give in to Love.

********************************************

 

Day 4: the ultimate un-guide to surrender. Resistance is futile.

Posted on by
20

surrender banner 1 copy

I yelled at C.C. last night. He had gone to pick up his son from the airport and I had gone to bed. My neck was hurting. Bad.

Later, when he climbed into bed beside me I was moaning and groaning about the pain. Every movement was agony. The slightest touch painful.

“Do you want ice?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” I yelled and started to cry. It hurt so much.

He got me ice.

Smart man.

Not only did he hear my unspoken need to have him take care of me, he got me the one thing that actually did work on relieving the pain.

This morning, I went in search of Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life. I couldn’t find it in the bookcase so I searched online for “What does Louise Hay say it mean when your neck hurts?”

Google, as always, delivered.

sargam-neck-pain
Source:  Sargam Mishra: Inner Alchemy

How divinely sublime.

As I struggle and search for understanding of what I don’t know about surrender, the universe (aka google) delivers up “Change is the only Constant”.

Seriously?

No wonder my neck hurts. I just got walloped with understanding.

Resistance is futile. Acceptance necessary.

As I read the article by Sargam Misra, pranic healer, I felt knowing invade my being.

Sargam writes:  Neck – refusing to see other sides of the question, stubbornness, inflexibility.

What? Me stubborn?

Then again, what is the question?

Good question.

As I sank into the meditation she shares at the end of her post, the question came floating in as softly and easily as a cloud drifting across a summer’s day. “Are you willing to let go?”

Let go? I wondered. Of what?

It all.

What all?

Your resistance.

But I’m not in resistance. I just don’t understand.

What if there’s nothing to understand?

How can there not be? There’s so much to know. And if I don’t know it all, everyone will think I’m stupid.

How will you know when you know it all?

That one stumped me. I am reminded of a piece of feedback, Thelma Box, founder of Choices Seminars gave me once in a process we were doing on the JoHari Window. “I experience you as a woman who will never find an answer good enough for her.” That one stumped me too.

Problem is (which is just another way to say ‘the gift I received in her feedback’), she was dead on.

Sometimes, no matter the question, I think there’s got to be a better, deeper, more complete, all-knowing answer and keep searching for a better one and better one and better one.

Like this morning. After reading Sargam Mishra’s article on Neck Pain and its spiritual causes, I listened to the meditation she shared at the bottom of her post and in the mantra’s melodic affirmation found my neck pain easing, the stiffness relaxing.

Does it matter if I know what I am resisting as much as letting go of my resistance?

Does it matter if I can’t label all the responsibilities I tell myself I’m carrying that are causing my neck to spasm as much as I let go of my belief I am carrying a truckload of responsibilities that I tell myself are weighing me down?

Does it matter if I can’t name the fear beneath my sense of carrying the world on my shoulders as much as I let go of my belief I am carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders?

Release. Let go. Surrender.

My mind wants to tell me it’s too woo hoo wacky to write about this stuff, to even suggest I think it might have helped

My heart and soul know. Believe it or not, my body responds to loving care. My spirit responds to intention.

My intention this morning was to dive beneath the physical manifestation of pain in my neck to sink into what I didn’t know about the pain in my neck.

I know the pain is real. Perhaps its cause is not quite so real. Perhaps its source is a belief I’m holding onto that does not serve me well.

In Sargam’s mantra I find relief. And that’s all I need to know. To trust. To allow.

“I release, I relax and let go. I am safe in life.”

Universal Mantra for Healing : Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hum 

Surrender — the ultimate un-guide. Part 3. Mindgames and others fields of folly

Posted on by
12

surrender banner 1 copy

My ego sees the world in black and white.

It craves concreteness. Labels. Meaning.

It feels strongest firmly planted in right versus wrong. Yes versus no. It holds absoluteness close and clings to what it knows fearing what it doesn’t know will hurt me and thus it, or at least damage the status quo it exalts in.

My ego thinks it is all I am.

Surrendering my ego leaves me breathless. It leaves me feeling exposed. Vulnerable. At risk.

Or so my mind tells me.

You cannot let go of me it says. I am all you are. All you want. All you need to be safe navigating this big, scary, unpredictable and chaotic world.

My mind likes to scare me. It likes to use words that make me believe I know everything I need to know to get through this life unscathed, or at least with minimal damage to my ego self. And everything else is irrelevant so why search for soulful meaning when ego is all I need?

But what does my mind know? It knows only the past and bases its response to today on its evaluation and assessment of my history. It filters its assessments through risk/reward ratios that are measured by how safe, or unsafe, it felt in every past experience and its measurement of the likelihood of ‘that’, whatever that is, happening again.

My mind cannot tell the future, even though it likes to tell me it can. All it can do is make up stories about the future based on what it experienced in my past.

Which, when I stop and think about it, is kind of funny. The past only exists in my mind. So where does the future live?

My mind is a trickster.

It does not want to surrender. It does not want to even give up a toehold to the possibility of ‘different’. It’s much more comfortable holding onto ‘the same’. In believing what was then, is what is now. That way, it doesn’t have to change its mind about anything.

My mind doesn’t like changing itself. It only wants to hold on. To control. To what it knows and tells itself (thus me) is true. It likes to create the illusion of safety through its capacity to rationalize, label and measure my life in terms of what it dictates is right, wrong, true, false, possible, impossible, fact, fiction and all kinds of jazzy stuff it feeds me to make me feel what it knows, or so it thinks, is the best for me to do, think, feel, be, become, have, go… without upsetting the applecart that is!

My mind thinks it knows it all.

It likes clarity and calls it insight so I will believe I really am in control of me, myself and I and how I am in this world. It also kind of enjoys the contradictions of my being too. It wants me to keep searching for the answers to ‘Who am I?’ because in my quest for answers, it doesn’t have to give up anything of itself. It only has to keep me searching.

Pretty sweet gig.

Keep me guessing and I’ll keep searching forever which keeps the mindgames going and going and going…

I surrender.

At least, until my next thought about what it means to surrender, or not…

Yup. Definitely some sweet mindgames keeping me running in circles in fields of folly.

When my ego thinks I just might surrender and quit playing its game, it can get downright dirty!

And so, I begin again.

I surrender.

 

 

 

What is the more I seek?

Posted on by
14

I found a question seeking me this morning. It came to me as I sat in the quiet of meditation, allowing the stillness to embrace me.

I hadn’t entered my meditation with a question. I had entered with the desire only to seek the quiet, the stillness, the sense of being in the oneness of the moment.

And in that moment, a question I had not seen in the morning light awoke within me.

Writing here every morning has a purpose. It is my place to ground, to find my center, to reach out to others and share the beauty and joy and complexities and contradictions I experience in the world around me and to illuminate the path of being light within the world.

After having taken breaks from this place, I know this place strengthens and enlightens my daily journey.

Yet, something has been unaligned, off-kilter. I could feel it shimmering at the edges of my consciousness, even if I could not see its details.

Yesterday, I spoke with a friend who, after hearing of my year of writing C.C. a love poem a day, decided two months ago to commit to writing her husband a love poem a day for a year.

“It has changed everything,” she told me yesterday. “He’s not a very sentimental kind of guy but he loves my poems and I love writing them for him.”

We chatted more about the power of ritual, the power of committing to doing something for someone simply for the joy of doing, of opening each day with a poem of love, and how, in the simple act of writing of love, love deepens.

And the question began its journey from the edges of my consciousness to the center of my being present.

It is the question I did not know I was seeking yet appeared as I settled into the silence this morning. “What is the more I seek?”

The beauty of the question is, the answer is not clear. It doesn’t need to be. The journey is in its exploration.

What is the more I seek?

My life is full. Rich. Complete.

The more I seek is not out there in the world. It is not more stuff, more power, more fame, more acclaim.

The more is within me.

To be explored. To be divined. To be experienced.

To begin.

To begin, I must allow myself to sink into the question. To delve into the unknown I cannot know until I release all I do know, or tell myself I know, about surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love.

I must surrender my knowing to allow space for the unknown to arise.

I must give up my answers to give rise to the questions.

And so I begin.

Again.

I begin to allow the question to become my north star guiding me home to that place within where the more I seek is all I become in the journey.

I don’t know the answer.

I don’t know what the journey will look like, or what will transpire. I do know that as I set off into my day today, I carry with me the question, “What is the more I seek?”

to create in the world.

to make better for others.

to deepen love.

to connect hearts.

to open minds.

to allow love in and out with every breath.

What is the more I seek?

For the next few weeks I shall be exploring surrender, hope, faith, mystery, loss, God, and the power of love.

What it means to surrender, to have hope, to know faith, to enter into mystery, to experience loss, to feel God’s breath, the breathe into the divine, to dance with spirit, and to fully embrace the power of love.

I am excited about the journey. I shall be using visual and written art forms in my exploration and sharing my discoveries here.

I’m curious to see what arises. I’m curious to see what I discover the more I seek the unknown.

A weekend retreat at Num-ti-Jah Lodge

Posted on by
6

The forecast was for clearer skies in the mountains.

The rain followed us out of the city, into the foothills, across the Great Continental Divide all the way to our destination, Num-ti-Jah Lodge, nestled on the shores of Bow Lake.

At 6700 ft above sea level, spring lumbers into Num-ti-Jah with the speed of a glacier receding. The lake is still frozen, the ground still covered in snow.

It didn’t matter. Rain or shine, C.C. and I set off at the crack of noon on Saturday to spend a delightful long weekend surrounded by the majesty of the peaks and the warm hospitality of our dear friend, TW, owner of Num-ti-Jah, and his staff. We didn’t need the sun to feel content. Contentment surrounded us in every breath, every view, every conversation and morsel of food.

It is early season at Num-ti-Jah, yet, the Lodge was full, the guests animated as they wandered the halls or sat in the big chairs by the fire, reading or playing crib.

There is no TV at Num-ti-Jah (yeah!) (nor cell phone service either). On Sunday, C.C. desperately wanted to watch the Gold Match in the world hockey championships and I really wanted a hike. We drove up to Chateau Lake Louise and with C.C. happily ensconced in the pub, I set off on the trail to the Lake Agnes Tea House, or at least as close as the snowy conditions at the top of the trail would allow.

As I hiked, I gave thanks to my former husband for teaching me how to be safe in the Rockies. It’s never just a walk in the park. Weather in the peaks can be unpredictable. Anything can happen. You must always be prepared.

The trail at the lakeside was bare but as I climbed up through the trees, it became less and less easily passable and more and more slushy and ice covered. I wasn’t worried. I was wearing good sturdy hiking boots and had my rain jacket, water and snacks in my backpack.

It wasn’t the case for many of the people I met. From Keds as footwear to every day runners and one girl in a pair of short shorts and halter top and designer shoes, I passed an assortment of ill-equipped people all along the trail. Few had backpacks or water and most had inappropriate footwear for the time of year and trail conditions.

The saving grace was the trail was busy. If anything should go amiss, there was always someone just a few minutes away along the trail.

Hiking is a very in the moment of now endeavour. It’s important to watch where each footstep is planted, where each next step takes you. It offers lots of opportunity to pace yourself, to be present, to be aware of all your surroundings and to stop and breathe in the air, take in the views and simply feel the exhilaration of being alive.

It was bliss. it didn’t matter if the trail was busy or what others were wearing. What mattered to me was that I was there, present and aware, savouring each footstep, each breath, each glimpse of distant peak and wide open vista.

And when I returned to join C.C. in the pub, I got to celebrate Canada’s win and enjoy a perfectly chilled glass of Pinot Gris. We laughed and chatted and woo hooed with another couple who had watched the game with C.C. as Canada’s flag was raised and as we drove back to the lodge to read and nap and then join TW for a late dinner, we both felt the satisfaction that comes with time spent together, and apart, doing the things we love.

It was a perfect day in the Rockies. A perfect weekend retreat.

 

What’s the Story You’ll Tell?

Posted on by
2

IMG_6562

The other day, while shopping for a gift for my youngest daughter’s boyfriend’s birthday, I overheard the woman who was helping me respond to a co-worker’s query of how she was doing. “I am blessed,” she replied.

“Wow!” Just hearing her response lifted my heart and made me smile.

“I love your response,” I told her.

“It’s my truth,” she replied. “I am blessed.”

Later, I caught myself smiling as I waited for a stoplight to turn green. I glanced at my left hand on the steering wheel and saw my wedding band clasping my finger and thought, “I am surrounded by love. How blessed am I.”

This morning, I stumbled upon a song by an artist I’ve never heard before, Morgan Harper Nichols. There is a wonderful line in her song, The Storyteller, (embedded at the end of this post) which reminded me of that woman and her truth, “Now I know it is well. That’s the story I’ll tell.”

What is the story you’ll tell?

When the going’s tough?

When times are great?

When life feels in between and confusion blinds you from seeing which way to turn?

What’s the story you’ll tell?

Great question for a dreary Friday morning leading into a long weekend.

The story I’m telling today is…

This is my one and only life. It is my journey. My gift. My joy. My possibility. My blessing.

My story is a song of love. Of gratitude. Of compassion and passion opening my heart wide to the stories of life shimmering all around me in the faces I see and the people I meet.

It is a song that burbles up from my soul full of belly laughs cascading over the rocky trails and smooth sailing waters I’ve travelled to find myself in this place where I know, I am home in my heart full of love.

This is the story I want to live, every day, welling up from deep within my roots, filling me up with joy. I want to dance. Spin about and sing out loud.

This is my life. I am grateful. I am blessed!

 

 

 

What a Great Day to Be Alive!

Posted on by
3

Tandy Balson is a wife, mother, grandmother, friend, volunteer and observer of life. She also likes to make people feel special by giving them foot rubs. According to the bio on her website, there’s quite a line-up for her gift of a foot rub! Get in line.

Tandy’s post today on her blog, Time with Tandy, is a reflection on sea glass and its reverse of nature creation. Seaglass, unlike other stones made by nature and then refined by man, are first made by man and then refined by nature.

Tandy goes on to speak of how she was made up of many shards of glass polished by God.

“God has done exactly the same thing with me. He has taken my life and made something beautiful out of the broken shards I once presented him with. Through time and experiences, I have been tumbled until my rough edges are worn down. No matter what has happened God can use all of my experiences to accomplish his good, pleasing and perfect will for my life. I am excited to see what he has in store for me!”

I don’t hold Tandy’s same belief system but I do love her analogy and its invitation to join in the conversation.

It gives me pause to think about, what do I believe?

I believe we are all born perfect, miraculous humans. We come into this world as reflections of the magnificence and divinity always present in the Universe, as expressed by your belief in God, Yahweh, Buddha, Allah…

I believe we are born as the human expression of the Divine. We are each nature’s unique expression of beauty, majesty and love over-flowing with joy in who we are in the world.

And then, life happens. Human life.

Human life is not as intentional as the Divine. Human life roughs us up. It sharpens our edges, Tumbles our magnificence in the chaos, confusion and contradictions of life on earth. Sometimes, it shatters us into shards of glass so pointed and sharp, we fear our hearts will bleed to death in the sorrow of all that has happened to break us apart.

And always, life continues in our human condition until we are no longer present on earth. In its continuance we are constantly faced with choices born of the happenstances of our lives and the journeys we’ve each taken from childhood to adulthood.

Do we accept we are forever broken? Do we accept we cannot change? Do we accept there is no other way than the path upon which we walk? Do we accept the universe is against us and there’s nothing we can do to create another way of being present in this world. Life’s a losing battle and we are its victim.

Or, do we accept the magnificence of our natural human condition? Do we accept the power of our soul’s creation. The beauty of our heart’s desire to express itself through love? Do we accept, now is not forever, this too shall pass and in its passing, the sun will shine, the birds will sing and our hearts will call us to awaken. In the moment by moment passing of this life that is ours, do we accept we have the choice to fall down, again and again, or put our hands out and stop our falling so that we can stretch ourselves beyond what we know to fly free of what brings us down?

It is in our choices that we are polished by life, like seaglass is smoothened by the ocean waves, into refined and beautiful pieces of art that shimmer in the light of each day bursting open with the joy of our heart’s awakening to the truth, we are the divine expression of amazing grace.

Thank you Tandy for your inspiration. You didn’t rub my feet but you definitely gave me pause to rub up against my own resistance to letting life have its way and smooth out some of my rough edges so that I could awaken this morning and declare, “Wow! What a great day to be alive!”

And so it is.