There is always an angel with you. Quiet yourself, breathe in and out deeply, ask a question and wait for an answer. Begin to write as you hear the words slip softly into your mind. These are your angels speaking to you. You can ask any question and receive an answer. What do they want you to know today? How to handle a certain situation? What to do next? Whatever you need assistance with, they are poised waiting to help. Lovingly, thoughtfully the answer will pour into your mind. Angels are prepared to give you the guidance that you seek but first you must ask and then you must be prepared to listen for the answer. It will not come as a blatant booming voice but as softly as raindrops sheeting down a window, one word following another until the answer lies there before you. It is human nature to doubt, but let go of your fears and concerns and wait to see what the angels have to say. Trust in what they offer you and follow what they tell you. Your life will magically unfold- peace and calmness will replace feelings of anxiety and worry. You will come to know that you are a natural part of the garden, unfolding as a flower unfolds in its own sweet beauty, as berries ripen into their succulance, as trees unfurl new growth. You are needed in the garden, you have a place.

Sixty years slip quickly away marked by moments great and small, noticed or forgotten. Living in the present, we reluctantly leave the past behind and eagerly plan for the future, but the future never seems quite as we imagined it.  60 years 21,900 days, 525,600 hours, 31,536,000 minutes and 1,892,160,000 seconds.  Time continuously moves on second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year.  Realization touches you that you have lived most of your days in rounds of activities that may have been important at the time but now you do not even remember them. You are lucky if you remember the morning. The elapse of time has feathered your memories and even they may not be as they actually happened but kaleidoscopes of remembered sensations and colors and important or not it, they are all lost now. No going back and changing the past, nor making time for regrets or having a do over.  What is done is done and over now.  Friends and aquaintances dropped in and out of our lives- some remembered, some not, some current, some not– all relentlessly on the same journey- some choosing to leave early. Tiny bites of grief taken out of your soul. Birthdays are a pause in the march of time-  Birthdays ask you to take note- another year has come to a close and a new one is about to begin. This is a time for reflection: What have I accomplished this year? Am I who I want to be?  Have I buried myself under a facade? Am I being true to me or have I lost myself somewhere along the way?  I was shown a leaf to demonstrate life’s path. When we are on target with our life’s journey, we take a straight path from the root of the leaf to the tip. The veins along the leaf represent the side  trips which call us away from the path.  Am I on the path or ventured out ont the sidelines ? Where do I want to b be or go? Are there more things to do or people to meet? Tomorrow, opening my eyes on my birthday……………………

Gwendolyn Villebrun

Beginning.

Again and again and again.

Perpetually starting over.

Releasing the old and embracing the new.

Reflection in the passing of the calendar

from the past into the future.

The passage of time

Mirrored wrinkles, tired eyes.  

Where have I gone?

Wanting to hold on, wanting to keep what I have,

to stay who I am

In this minute

But this minute has already slipped into the next and

A year has gone by.

Fresh page, fresh resolutions.

New Year. Another chance to begin again.

I t seems that many people are choosing to leave the Garden. They are being called away to that other place with the Great Eternal Spirit. Those of us who are left feel abandoned and lonely and in great pain: the ones we love are no longer by our side. Here it seems our greatest love seems to bring great pain.  But on the other side there is nothing but Love, total and all encompassing. Love only, no pain and no sorrows. Rejoice for those who are gone for they are now basking in that  greater Love.

Illness  on this side comes from our disconnection to that greater love and from not surrendering to the Ocean of Love that holds us right here and now. Here we do not always understand the whys of what is occurring in our lives but each and every thing is meant for  blessing. Instead we find the pain. Don’t hide from the pain.. Pain is our monitor, pain is our direction finder.  Feel your way through the pain and to the blessing On the other side of the pain is the Love. Look inside yourself for the answer. At the core of your being you have never been separated from that Love. We do not need to die to experience that Eternal Love. Rest easy, feel yourself infused with it, accept it. You know within your Being that this is so.

Meanwhile  we still have a life to live in the Garden- it is no less beautiful than the day before your loved one left and there are  blessings to come that are meant only for you.

We’ve been here before: You and I
When I first meet you I remember that I know you
Deep within my being my heart recognizes you
Somewhere at some time we’ve been intimate
Loving and embracing each other
Our differences complementary
Our souls in harmony
But in one instant
I forget and slip into judgment
You are too much or perhaps too little
You don’t fulfill my expectations
I no longer feel your essence
Making you into a stranger
Separating myself from you
I move past you
Looking for what I already have
If only I could keep my heart open
Help me to remember

We are passionate people. We connect to our work in a passionate way. We commit and we get involved! We have that passion with those around us in personal and profound ways. We also share our space and within that space we share our energy. When one of us gets excited, energized or angry, we can transfer and share that energy with others. There is a positive side to being amped up- ready to go- ready to take on the cause and ready to step up to the bat. There can also be a negative charge- when someone else’s energy sideswipes you and you feel charged but have nowhere to go with it.  Like when we walk into a room where people have been arguing just the minute before, there’s that feeling that we get. What do you do with it? When we get charged up in an angry way, the first thing is we try to download some of it. The place to go is often those closest to us- like in the next cubicle or in the manager’s office.

One of my interests is how to handle this energy so it doesn’t swamp us.

I reencountered a book the other day- Find a Quiet Corner. A friend gave me this book many years ago and this is an updated version. The author Nancy O’Hara calls a quiet corner “a moment in time, a place in time, a breath. A quiet corner can be found anywhere and can be created any time. It is an attitude and an outlook. A quiet corner simply needs a shift in perspective to emerge. Once you learn to identify this state of grace, you can learn to create in on your own. All it takes is a decision and a resignation. Give up your usual practices, leave expectations at the door of your quiet corner and be prepared to enter a world where anything is possible.”

Martha Beck, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, says that sometimes it takes a radical event to reawaken you to the inner voice that is always telling you what decisions to make what to embrace and what to avoid and how to steer through various inner and outer situations. She describes a woman who had a stroke and lost her verbal ability but “found herself knowing that she lived in a universally interconnected universe in which we are perfect, we are whole, and we are beautiful. Martha says that  this state which she calls wordlessness allows us to see our true nature and to heal from the violence of a thought system that cuts us apart, destroying our compassion for ourselves and for others. Moving into this state allows the brain to be in its rest and relax state. This affects the whole body, releasing a flood of hormones that helps repair and heal your body, relaxes your muscles and puts you in a deep stillness. There are many ways to get into this place meditation, running, massage. There are a couple of exercises that  we might try

Close your eyes and hold up one hand so it is not touching anything but air.

Ask your thinking mind   Without opening my eyes, how can I know that my hand exists?

Feel your mind’s attention go inside the body to answer the question, activating a nonverbal part of the brain. Now hold up both hands (eyes still closed and feel the inside of both at the same time. Your awareness will slide out of left hemisphere verbal thinking and into both hemispheres- wordlessness           You won’t articulate this until it’s over. The point is to feel it. As people team we have the ability to influence each other. When you are getting worked up tell yourself- Breathe. Just breathe and we can do that also  for each other. After all we are  beautiful people and we deserve it!

Find a friend and look into the window of their eyes. Just inside you will see a light shining. Look deeply enough; you will see that light is reflecting back yourself to you. Each one a shining flame, each one a perfect being, just as you yourself are perfect, eternal and complete. We desire to be recognized, to have someone see us and love us for being us, for someone to know us and accept us, to experience the comfort of knowing that we are not different or weird or alone. All of these gifts have already become yours- the moment you were born you were embraced and welcomed and loved beyond the love that we can offer each other. The One we look for in others is waiting for us to discover that in life we are wrapped and held with loving arms that are invisible to us but present nonetheless. The Eternal one clasps us to the bosom as surely as a mother holds her child, as surely as the bird protects her little chicks. The eternal one loves you without regard, without reason, simply because you are you.

Look at your surroundings. Messages are being delivered moment by moment. All around you are being told and shown that you are beautiful, that you are loved; the messages pour in in kaleidoscopic ways, piling up in abundance asking you to listen and hear, see and believe, ask and know.  You are the beloved.

The mama moose walked to the side of the road carefully looking both ways. Her ears twitched back and forth as she listened for the possibility of an encroaching vehicle. Deeming it safe, she went back into the bush and emerged one again with two toddlers behind her. Reaching the road side again, she ran quickly across the road giving the young ones the signal to hurry across. Once there she escorted them somewhere into the bush and reappeared momentarily to have a little lunch at the lush green grass along the ditch line. 
We share this wonderful world with many kinds of the Creators creatures. We get caught up in listening to the news of the day and concern ourselves with the plight of other human beings and seldom  stop to ponder the lives of our co inhabitants of earth and what they face each and every day.  We tailor the world for our convenience- spray for insects, uproot ecological habitats for our own convenience to build roads, houses and communities and we mostly ignore the millions who share this space with us.

Mama moose is an intelligent being, capable of forethought and planning and communication. She arranges for the safety of her offspring much as a human mama would, provides for them, rears them with discipline so they respond to her when she calls, and keeps them safe from harm.  Mama moose lives her life without infringing on ours, doing the best she can with what we leave for her in our manic obsession to take over the earth. Have you considered your own footstep on the earth? Can you  live so lightly that no one will know you have been there?

While narrating a video with pictures of beautiful scenery and beautiful people taken for National Geographic, the photographer invites us to ask ourselves what is right with the world. He paints a picture of beauty hidden from our view by a difference of a few steps. Where we might look and see weeds, he invites us to look for the beauty hidden there.  In a photograph of the seeds of a dandelion, he exposes beauty through his lens, capturing the seeds reaching up to the sun, bathed in light..

Where one might see a wrinkled face, he invites us to look at the story behind the face for the beauty hidden there. He says to look for meaning in a life and recognize how that one life is connected around the world.

It is easy to deny, easy to ignore and easy  to miss the beauty  that exists all around us,  to realize that in the experience of each moment lies an incredible vista willing to open itself to our eyes, if we are willing to open our heart to see it.

In tragedy, there are hands reaching out to help, someone willing to cry with us and share our sorrow. In laughter, there are other voices willing to join in and echo our happiness. We are swimming in a pool of acceptance and love, support and caring. Everything is right with the world. Have you looked around you lately? What is there waiting for you to notice?

Wordless

Have you spent any time watching the activity of your mind even for just one day? Are you compelled to be busy- talking, watching television, listening to music, reading, engaging in meaningless conversations– all of your waking hours consumed for the sole purpose of keeping your mind occupied and busy?  Have you studied the interior conversations that flit through your mind second by second?  Or analyzed your interior conversations and how they contribute to the outward experience that you are having?  Do you have words playing in your mind –endlessly repetitions of the same story which reiterate:  would have, could have, should have, he said, I said, I should have said, if only I had…..

 What is it that you are telling yourself? How do you react to the stories you have made? Have you noticed how your emotions are influenced by the thoughts you choose to think?

Are you a victim in your mind or a hero stamping out injustice? What is your role in your internal drama? Have you asked yourself whether what you are telling yourself is real? Is it true?

 If you imagine that the story in your head is only your story and that you are the creator, author and experiencer of that story, would you be willing to create a different story? Write a different version with different scripts?  Change the villains into heroes? Change the outcomes to happy ones?  Live another life? When you change your inner story, other actors in your story change their lines to match what you have written.

What if you could you change the story whenever you want?? Or simply abandon the need to have a story at all. Can you simply observe without the need to form thoughts and judgments? Can you live for a day without words? Can you live for a day in the silence? Live in the garden without rewriting it.