What Does God Call You?  (To listen to the audio of this contemplative meditation, click HERE)

I Have News For You
9^th Century Irish Poem

I have news for you:
The stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course
The sea running high.
Deep red the bracken; its shape is lost;
The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry,
cold has seized the birds’ wings;
season of ice, this is my news

O Come. O Come Emmanuel

It is the third week of Advent. Anticipation hangs in the air, glittering with the shimmer of a thousand candles glowing in the night. And still we move further into the darkness. This season of ice, where cold has seized the birds’ wings.  Where news of The Christchild’s coming rings forth across the land. Where yearning for the sun’s return rings in every heart.

I wait in expectation of the holy of holy nights when hope shall spring forth in a world of peace, Love and joy.

And still, my heart is heavy. Our world so sorely in need of peace continues to gravitate towards pain, war, suffering, killing. Our world so desperately in need of quiet rages in the agony of death.

And still I wait.

O Come! O Come! Emmanuel.  O Come! Bring forth peace, hope, love and joy.

Bring it on oh holy one. Bring it on.

I am ready. I am willing. I am open to peace, hope, love and joy.

And still I wait.

Frustration rises. Fear edges into my awakening.

Can we not see? Can we not know that we are killing one another with our guns and ammunition. Our insistence that we are right, they are wrong. Our fighting for ground. For religious beliefs and social acceptance.

Can we not see?O Come! O Come! Emmanuel

And I am reminded. Peace begins with me. I cannot make peace when I hold onto anger, fear, frustration. I cannot be peace when I make war against the world around me.

O Come O Come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Oh Israel. To thee shall come Emmanuel

I remember as a child my mother humming this song. Her sweet clear voice echoing in the dark. I loved to hear her sing. Loved to hear her voice.

And I breathe.

And hear the invitation to deepen my understanding of this season and its promise of peace, hope, love and joy.

I breathe and feel its truth calling to my heart, this universal truth that speaks of our humanity — we are born in the reflection of God, Yahweh, Allah. We embody God’s greatness, him or her or it – it doesn’t matter what word we use for God. God does not listen to our words. God listens only to our hearts.

We are limitless in our possibilities. We are magnificent. We are holy. We are divine.

This is not ‘God’ as limited by our language, but rather a concept of God that is unlimited through a broadening of our vocabulary — The Divine. Creator. Yaweh. Almighty Father. King of Kings. Spirit, Lord.

In this time of waiting, in this time of darkness I let go of the words I know and step into that place where I broaden my ‘God vocabulary’. That place where I slip beyond the secular of my language to the Divine presence embodied in the collective will of man, a spirit that embraces me in wonder as I stand in Love.

In love, I breathe into my divine essence.

In love, I come home to the One.

In love, I hear the Divine calling of my name as I embrace the beauty and the wonder of my human condition, this condition I share with each of you – We are the Divine expression of God’s amazing grace.

And I wonder, I call God many things. What does God call me?

Child. Friend. Believer?  What does God call me?

Perhaps the answer is… Home.

 Audio File for Week 3

 Reflections:

1. Do you have a name(s) for God in your life? What is it?
2. What name does God call you?
3. What is calling to your heart in this season of dark becoming light?
4. During the meditation, was there a space where you felt yourself moved beyond the words you use to describe God into that space where what you call God is nothing compared to the Divine calling you to awaken?

The past is not a place to live in. It is a place to learn from so that we can live in today and have hope for the future.
Casey Eagle Speaker

When I was a little girl, my birthday often got messed up into the Christmas festivities, leaving me feeling left out, not important, insignificant. You know, all those things children think are true about themselves because they don’t have the cognitive capacity to make sense of the world around them and see the world only through the eyes of “I am the centre of the universe so it must be all about me!”

As a child, I could not see that it wasn’t that my birthday wasn’t important or that I wasn’t significant or made a difference in our family. It was that my mother was often alone, had four children to tend to and was suffering from a great sadness that haunted her every moment.

Years ago, when I was a mother of young children, I asked my mother to tell me her life story. It was then I realized the great sadness that haunted her was not of my making. It had descended long before my arrival in this world. The tragedy wasn’t that she was sad. It was that over the decades she had not received proper attention for the darkness that filled her light and so drifted day to day through a haze of over the counter drugs she employed to soften the edges of her sadness.

As a child, my father was often away. I used to make up stories about where he was. What he was doing. Who he was talking to. Mostly my stories revolved around him saving the world because he was a super hero and had great things to do. In his absence, my mother would often threaten to tell my father of all the wrongs I’d committed. It worried me. Did that mean he was away because I was bad? I tried to be good. I really did. But my attempts were futile. My father stayed away. And so, I told myself stories of why he was gone so long and how it couldn’t be all about me, even though my child’s mind believed it was.

In reality, he was trying to make a living to support his family and was doing what he knew best to do when faced with challenges that threatened to overwhelm him. Run away. Disappear. Be silent and distant. It was all he’d ever known to cope with childhood trauma’s and a troubled past he could not understand. He too was doing the best he could. It’s just children don’t come with an instruction manual. How was he to figure us out?

The beauty of time and growing older is, the past is not as welcoming as it grows further into the distance. In its fading days, I am learning to be more present in today, more conscious of my now, more grateful for what I have in this moment, right now.

And I am truly grateful.

Yesterday was C.C.’s birthday. we celebrated with a dinner for two at home. A delightful evening of candles and music, wine and food carefully prepared with Love.

Today is my birthday. His kiss stirred me from my sleep. His birthday song awoke me.

What a delightful, loving, tender way to greet my day.

Oh. And Beaumont got in the mix too!  He stuck his nose in my face as I lay on the bed savouring the morning and gave me a great big birthday lick!  How sweet is that! (I guess now is not the time to tell him I don’t like doggie kisses! )

It is my birthday and I get to celebrate and be thankful for my life and all the years I’ve spent learning how to live it with passion, joy and Love.

I am truly blessed and very grateful..

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
David Whyte
The Winter of Listening

It is the second week of advent. As you wait for the sun’s return, as you listen for your deepest knowing to awaken from these long dark nights of winter, listen to your heart. Listen to the silence and winter calling you to know ‘the otherness’.

The otherness of letting go of busy. Of releasing that which pressures you into doing too much. The otherness within when you allow time for breath to arise easily from deep within your soul. The otherness of knowing peace, hope, love and joy is here, right now, in this moment when we stop and breathe into its essence.

This is the time of endless nights growing darker. Of day’s light growing weaker in the soft approach of winter solstice, in the coming light of the child’s birth drawing near.

This is a time when our patience grows thin as we rush about, fighting crowds and traffic, endlessly hurrying towards one more checkmark on the list, one more item scratched off on the gifts we must buy.

Patience is a virtue and at this time of year, a necessity. Yet, we struggle against giving it time to grow, to take form, to inhabit our being present in the darkness of these wintery days so that we can lean into the silence to hear the song of joy being born within our hearts.

We cannot change the course of night, just as we cannot change the path of the earth moving around the sun. Winter will pass in its time, and whether we wait with calm heart, or battle against time’s slow passing, the sun will appear upon the horizon, raising itself up into the sky, with or without our permission. No matter how many items are checked off on our list, the sun will return, days will lengthen and nights grow shorter. The cycle of time passing will continue, again and again, in its never ending circle of life.

This is a time when I seek that place of quiet within where I can hear my heart giving birth to the new life I must call my own. This is a time when I yearn to fall into place with the world around me and the world within me. A place where the hustle and bustle of the season wanes as I find that place within where I know communion with the world, within and outside of me. This is the place where I let go of that which I ‘hate’ about me and find the courage to live from my poet’s heart growing up within me. It is in this place I sense the world through the beauty expressing itself through my soul’s desire to give birth to the one I have been waiting for, just as over 2,000 years ago, Mary gave birth to the One the world awaited.

And in that moment of quiet, as I sit in the stillness of the night, a song arises within me, and I find myself settling into my heart. In silence I wait patiently for the sun to return like a mother awaits the birth of her child.

And the world awaits the coming of peace, hope, love and joy to become the essence of my world.

Expectant Silence  (An Advent Poem)
©2012 Louise Gallagher

In expectant silence
the world awaits
the coming
of a child whose birth heralds
a world
of peace
hope
love
and
joy.

In the quiet
of dawning light
I await
morning
streaming rose and gold
threads of glory
filling the sky
with the promise
of a new day
born in the darkness
of the night

silence descends
light enters

I feel
the breath of the Divine

rising up within me
awakening my soul
with fluttering wings
and with each breath

I become an oasis
of peace
hope
love
and
joy.

REFLECTIONS for Week 2

Reflections:

1. What song is your heart listening to?
2. Where do you need to stop listening to ‘those who had nothing to say’ so that you can hear the miraculous within you?
3. What can you do this week to make space for the ‘new life’ that you must call your own to be born? During the meditation, was there a space where you felt yourself letting go of diminishing your presence?
4. How can you carry that sense of the vastness of your being into the world with you today and for the next week?

For the meditation, please click HERE.

To read Make Time for the Sacred: Week 2, Click HERE.

I pretty well love anything Pentatonix releases and their songs of the season are no different.

Here is their version of Carol of the Bells.

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While I don’t normally post on the weekends, throughout the month of December I will use the time to sahre music of the season that fills me with wonder and awe. Hope it does the same for you too!

Blessings on your day.

Don’t only practice your art,
But force your way into its secrets,
for it and knowledge can
raise men to the Divine.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Almost every morning since my first post at my original blog, Recover Your Joy, on March 3rd, 2007 (Scooping Up The Shadows), I have sat before a blank screen and forced my way into the secrets of my art. Trusting the process for no reason other than I am part of the process, a willing servant to the muse’s desire to have her way with me, I have placed my fingertips on my keyboard and let the words come.

In allowing vowels to follow consonants and making way for thoughts and ideas to dance their way into sentences strung together by words of every imagining, I have forced my way into the secrets of my heart, my vulnerability, my creative essence.

In this commitment to sit at my computer and explore the questions that arise simply because I am committed to being present here in dawn’s questioning light, I have discovered the power and joy of writing it out. Immersed in the wonder and awe of being connected to the Divine essence of my creative soulfulness. Practicing my art every morning has forced me to embrace my humanity and our shared human condition.

This is a journey of revolution and evolution.

I have chosen to take this journey because to not take it would have left me cowering beneath my fear of the dark, hiding in the shadows of my uncertain belief that this life, my life, makes a difference.

In appearing here every morning, in witnessing my words unfold and reach out far beyond the letters appearing on my screen, I have discovered truth shimmering in my fears. Light shining in the darkness.

On Tuesday, Liz at Be. Love. Live. shared a powerful description of the darkness in her post, Here’s How To Stop Being Afraid of the Dark:

“In a black hole, much of the light is trapped inside of the actual black hole, so there is a massive amount of light inside of it. The perception of a black hole is that it would be a physical manifestation of darkness, and yet, the black hole itself is filled with dense light. The vacuum of space, which we perceive as darkness, is filled with matter and anti-matter which is a form of storing light. In this sense, the darkness of the vacuum is just a state of light that is standing still. So it turns out that all of the physical perceptions of darkness around us are just another form of light. This brings us to the fact that the physics, if it is mirroring the spiritual, is telling us that the darkness itself is another form of the light and that darkness is dense light. Darkness is light that is standing still and is stored in a state of readiness to become light. Darkness is potential light and therefore, darkness is the source of light.” – quote fromspirituality information 101 (you can also check out what NASA says >>> here).

Darkness is light standing still. Densely packed, full of potential. Fully embracing its source. And that source is light.

How Divine.

Namaste.

It was one of those projects that brought out my victim thinking with ease.

Don’t blame me if I don’t get it right. Not enough time to do it. Not enough direction. Not my fault. Yada. Yada. Yada.

At one point, I was into such full-blown victimhood I arrived home from work one evening and told C.C. “That’s it. I can’t do anything right. I quit.”

Ah yes, the critter and his exquisitely timed whispers of self-doubt and fear.

The critter has had my lifetime to perfect his art of making sure I do not step too far from the baseness of my fears. He is extremely adept at finding those soft spots, those vulnerable places where I am feeling less than. He likes to fearlessly leap into the fray without a thought for what’s happening inside me, with me, for me. With his mind always set on defending against unseen intruders, moments of insecurity, breaths of doubt, he’s always ready to shore up my defences against the world’s onslaught and protect me from others..

Problem is, he doesn’t really think about what’s best for me in the now. He’s always measuring everything today against what happened back then. He doesn’t see me as an adult. He sees me only as a defenceless child that he was responsible for protecting and sheltering through life’s storm.

In the here and now, the critter does not stop to ask, What’s the mature, adult, kind and caring way for me to respond or behave in this situation?

His brain matter is grounded in less than thinking. Where there is abundance, the critter fears lack. Where there is possibility, the critter sees hopelessness. And while his intentions are in his thinking, ‘good’ — He’s protecting me and keeping me safe from harm. — the outcome of my outbursts while under the influence of critter brain is never fruitful. It is always destructive.

No matter how I like to slice it, what the critter always does is undermine my self-efficacy and my willingness to turn up, do my best and be accountable for my journey.

The critter, who likes to be in charge of my victimhood, does not like being accountable. He does not like for me to take responsibility for my actions, or how I turn up.

He’d prefer if I am going to turn up, that I do it with a big sign that says, “Not My Fault!”

That way, whatever happens I can deny all culpability, accountability and responsibility. That way, it’s always the other guy’s fault, no matter who the other guy, circumstance or happening may be! Which is rather convenient if I don’t feel like being my true self and would rather just have someone else take control for a while.

The critter’s not into my ability to be present in truth, honesty and light. He’s into his ability to shield me from what he deems the harsh realities of life and the vagaries of humans to create chaos, pain and shame where ever we go.

He cannot see that my responsibility is to standing in truth, honesty, light… Love.

He can only see the dark abyss of my deepest fears. The critter can only see the pains of the past and at all costs, believes he must shield me from it happening ever-again in the present.

Fortunately, I found my balance. I found my solid ground in turning up, paying attention, speaking my truth, and staying unattached to the outcome.

I am no longer giving into the critter woeing me to play the victim. Sure, there are vestiges of his cloying nature evident in my short-temperedness and edgie responses to what are simple questions or normal circumstances. I’m quietly, lovingly wooing those edges back into place. I’m quietly, lovingly smoothing out my temper with reminders of my capacity to play harmoniously, play fair, play kind in the world.

It is an ongoing evolutionary process.

Now, to apologize and be accountable to those who bore the brunt of my ill-humour and thoughtless attempts to give the critter reign over my being present in truth, honesty, light and Love.

‘Cause, the critter is not in charge of the light. If he were, he’d throw a dark blanket over it to keep the light from burning out.

I’m in charge of my light. And the truth is, my light will not burn out when I give it air to breathe and love to feed its fire.

Source for gif and quote:  Zen Flash