When I spoke over the summer I had everyone read a short prayer together. I really enjoyed the way it caused our vibrations to match and it truly helped me calm my nerves and center myself.
So I’d like to do that again, I put a prayer on all the seats…everyone got one? Please join me…
Infinite Spirit we ask that you help us stay connected to you on this day and every day so that we may know the peace that is our inheritance. Lead us through a world where we see only love in every situation. Guide us to make the choice for love and to relinquish fear. Whenever we are tempted to listen to fear's cries, let us listen instead to loves song and know it is our own. Amen
Can you all feel the change in our vibrations as we read together and focus our thoughts on the same words and their reality? The energy rises and spirit pulls us all together.
I love that feeling. Thank you all.
Physicists will tell you everything vibrates. Everything. Every atom and every molecule. Things that are alive like you and I and solid items like the benches on which you sit…everything has a vibration…a frequency…
I’m no physicist and the amount of data to be found on the subject is truly overwhelming…
Emotions are vibrational frequencies as well…and those same physicists can show that although we express a multitude of emotions and feelings the basic vibrational frequency boils down to either that of love or that of fear.
All we do and feel, how we react…everything about our personality comes from the vibration of either fear or love.
Sometimes that’s an easy distinction to make.
Sometimes it’s not so clear.
We’ve all been programmed to live with fear in so many ways.
In the oddest of places we are instilled with a sense of fear.
I went to a wedding a couple weeks ago. It took place in an absolutely stunning church. Rich with rituals and traditions that set a very sacred tone. I sat in the pews admiring the ornate details and opulent beauty that surrounded me, but the message I walked away with didn’t express the same beauty.
I walked away in awe about how fear was so deeply embedded in what I would consider a sacred place of love…
Spirit works in amazing ways and I knew half way thru the ceremony that this would be a great topic to share here today with you all…I don’t think I have any answers, but I think it’s worth being aware of and a it’s discussion worth having.
Our first principle says “We believe in Infinite Spirit and that God is Infinite Spirit.”
Websters says infinite means …“having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude; inexhaustible; extending beyond measure or comprehension: without beginning or end; endless; vast; immense”
I love that. Boundless Spirit with no limits. An inexhaustible, endless God.
Sometimes you’ll hear it said as Infinite Intelligence… isn’t that a wonderful too, limitless intelligence?
It makes sense that God would be infinite and inexhaustible.
That is what we’ve learned as Spiritualists. To believe in Infinite Spirit.
So I guess I was taken aback by this wedding ceremony and the limitations placed on the God they choose to believe in.
To begin with the priest welcomed the bride and groom and congratulated them for choosing to have their ceremony there in that specific church. He went on to compare a beach wedding to a church wedding, specifically that denomination of church wedding. He professed with great conviction that this bride and groom and their marriage would be more blessed and somehow better because it took place inside this church in front of God and not on a beach or a at a park where God wouldn’t be.
It was proclaimed to the congregation that here in this church is the only way to truly take marriage vows and that any other way would lead to unforeseen negative consequences.
God would really only be with them if those vows were taken in this kind of church.
How scary of a thought is that?
God with limits? A God that’s not all encompassing and everywhere…
God’s not at the beach?
This is what he wanted me to believe…
I don’t know about you but I’ve never been to the beach and not felt the presence of Spirit or God. Outside under the sky I feel closer to God than just about anywhere, although for me Spirit is always with me. Everywhere.
I couldn’t believe this man wanted to convince this congregation that God wasn’t at the beach or at a park or anywhere other than at that church?
Don’t you believe God is everywhere?
My truth says I’m never without God.
No matter what.
In the bible it does say that wherever 2 or more are gathered in His name He is there…that could be at the beach couldn’t it?
I was amazed that this pastor wanted to put “the fear of God” (interesting phrase really huh?)
into us, somehow insinuating that God isn’t always with us. Saying He’d leave us if we didn’t do things just so. He said being at that kind of church was the only way to really be with God.
The sermon went on to discuss the sacrifices and hardwork we all must face in order to one day enjoy God’s Love in Heaven.
The emphasis was on all the terrible things we must endure here in this life to reach that ultimate place where we can feel the beauty of God’s Love.
He even pointed out the beautiful artwork depicting all the sacrifices and the difficult climb that eventually reached the ultimate expression of God’s Love, to be found in Heaven.
I kept feeling, what’s with all the doom and gloom?
We have to die to know God’s love?
He’s got to be kidding right?
I wanted to jump out of my seat by now…
To me God equals unconditional ever present love and this wasn’t resonating with me…
The ideas of reaching towards God’s love as some reward for right living…
The idea that God’s Love isn’t already all around us everyday to enjoy and grow in.
I believe God’s love is here…right now…in each moment… God loves us.
God isn’t about making us suffer in order to be loved…
Not to me anyway. I’m thinking not to most of you either…
But fear has convinced a lot of people that that is the truth….fear hidden behind a loving agenda.
Such a traditional and beautiful faith for many but in my opinion it very much relies on the fear they instill in its members.
Its almost like a catalist for fear in our society and when leaving the church that day I realized how difficult of a challenge it would be to remove fear from humanity when it’s so deeply embedded in a place that should be only and all about love.
Sometimes we think we are doing or feeling or reacting to a situation out of love but deep inside fear is the true motivation. It’s tricky how fear takes hold and manipulates our true selves…
Fear often goes unnoticed and disguised as love.
One example I can give of the way fear hides behind what we consider acts of love, is our relationships to our children.
I love when we have kids in the sanctuary. The purity and joy of the energy that comes from little people is one of God’s greatest gifts.
Here at church they have the chance to learn such beautiful lessons and to be lucky enough to begin absorbing this energy at a young age is just wonderful…
One of the less obvious lessons to be learned here is how to sit quietly and listen. Not the little babies of course but as they begin to grow and understand…
Learning how to show respect for people sitting nearby and for whoever is on the platform speaking is a valuable life skill and this atmosphere is perfect to begin to nurture that learning…
We all know kids can be disruptive and unsettled, it’s their nature and not unexpected. Sitting still is a difficult task at any age never mind at 5 years old. It’s not easy to speak up and ask them to stop kicking the seat or to not crinkle the papers. We are reluctant to correct the child. We are afraid we’ll hurt their feelings, or afraid they’ll be mad at us and think we are a meany or that we don’t love them.
When in truth it is an act of love. After all our goal is to teach them skills for the life they have ahead of them…
It’s the love we have for them that wants to teach them and help them be prepared for other life situations where stillness and attention is needed.
How many times have you all seen a mom at the grocery store give in to her child’s tantrum just to stop the tantrum? It’s fear that motivates that decision. Fear of being embarrassed by a freaking out child, fear of said child thinking you’re a rotten mom…
It might not be obvious but NOT giving in is reacting with love.
Fear and love. The 2 most basic human emotions. The foundation and truth behind all other emotions.
It’s either fear or love.
Sometimes we know from which we are reacting but often times we are deceived by our own conditioning and confuse the two.
I may not have control in the moment fear takes over, but if I can step outside of myself enough to be aware then maybe I can gently nudge myself back to being fueled by love.
I really love affirmations. I will make a new affirmation each day and declare my intention to always vibrate with love. I will ask infinite spirit to guide me and help me be aware and I will believe it’s possible.
When working within the vibration of love we fufill our true destiny where we can find and share the peace that is our inheritance.
Inheritance means it’s ours, gifted to us.
Staying within that love frequency and letting go of fear is the surest way to finding that peace.
Thank you infinite spirit for being just that,
Infinite, limitless and boundary free…
Thank you for guiding us to always operate on the frequency of love.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Gratitude
this is the talk i gave at church this morning...i was so nervous...but i stayed on my feet and didn't pass out so that's a good thing LOL...
I left a short prayer on the benches and I thought if we all could start by saying it together it will help me to relax and get grounded and maybe some of these butterflies will go away…
Thank you, Universe, for your grace and guidance.For intuition, luck, hope and dreams. Thank you for the ever-present abundance that is reflected in each moment of my life.
I actually wrote this lecture a few years ago with the intention that I’d love to express to this congregation and my church family just how much I appreciate all that has been brought into my life from being a part of this wonderful community.
But in the years since it’s been put into words, it’s changed quite a bit and this last week it’s seen a major overhaul…
A few years before I found this church I went on a quest…
I really wanted to go to church on Sunday’s and have a spiritual community or family in my life.
Over a few years time I went to maybe 20 different churches.
I started with the Baptist church that I grew up at; I went to catholic mass, jewish temple, greek orthodox mass, congregational churches, assembly of god churches…
I went to lots of beautiful churches but none of them really resonated with me or made me feel I wanted to go back again the next week.
So I gave up.
I didn’t go to church for a few years.
Early summer 2007 my best friend Jill suffered the loss of her sister. It was unexpected and very tragic and it left Jill looking for answers.
We went for readings and saw mediums but still had not heard of “spiritual” churches.
That following winter Jill lost her birth mother in an accident. It was a very tough time and she found herself at an evening with the spirits at the YMCA where Maria Helvason was the medium. The messages Jill got that night were spot on and before she left Maria gave out her business card that said she was the assistant pastor here at the Swampscott church of spiritualism.
Ooohhh…a church of spiritualism?
We googled it and found out what time Sunday services were and planned on going.
The Sunday we planned for ended up being Easter Sunday and I had a small meltdown that morning thinking “it’s Easter Sunday and I can’t go to a church without Jesus”
So I didn’t go that day. But Jill did…
She called me before the day was out to say what a fantastic church it was and that they did indeed acknowledge Jesus on Easter Sunday. That made me happy and I decided I’d check it out the following week.
What a beautiful feeling from the moment I walked thru those purple doors. Smiling faces and positive energy overflowed the small sanctuary.
At one point a lovely lady turned and said to me “your new here aren’t you? My name is Val, what’s your name?”
“we have lunch after the service you should stay and eat.”
All those different churches I went to and not once did anyone say hello or invite me to fellowship…
This church is special and I am so grateful that we found it.
Pebbles and Andrea are the names of Jill’s sister and mother and thru their passing we found this community of love and family. They led us here in some odd way…and I’m grateful for that.
How many of you have had a tragic loss lead you to this church?
How hard is it to acknowledge that as a blessing?
Our 7th principle says:
“We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey natures physical and spiritual laws.”
The first time I heard the principles I knew right away I loved them, all of them…even if I didn’t quite understand all the details…
For instance what are nature’s physical and spirituals laws?
So I began reading books and googling to learn as much as I could about these laws and how they impact my life.
Dan Millman wrote a fantastic book called “Laws of Spirit”.
I recommend it to anyone who is interested in further definitions for natures physical and spiritual laws.
There are so many, and they seem to work with each other in many ways.
The law of balance
The law of choices
The law of presence
The law of faith
The law of action
The law of unity
The law of attraction…
My favorite, or the one that really speaks to me is the law of gratitude. Oprah had me start a gratitude journal years ago so it’s been a part of my life before discovering it was actually one of natures physical and spiritual laws.
The law of gratitude is vital to our being happy. I like being happy, so I thought I’d discuss gratitude. All sides of gratitude.
It’s easy to be grateful for all the wonderful things in our lives…like this church, or our friends and families.
I wake up each day and try to remember to be grateful for all that I am blessed with…starting with my breath and my health…my beautiful daughters and their health, my family, the roof over my head, the love of my dogs and the company of my good friends…
such easy things to be grateful for and all of us should try and remember to find time to be thankful for all the blessings in our lives.
The trick is finding the place where you can be grateful for EVERYTHING about life. There is a sense of peace that comes when you realize EVERYTHING is a blessing.
Yes everything.
That’s a tough one.
How can you suffer the loss of a loved one and find gratitude?
How do you live with disease and illness and be grateful for that?
How the heck are we supposed to be grateful for things that cause us pain and heartache?
Honestly, I don’t have the answer to that.
It’s an individual choice and we each have to find the right eyes for seeing our own challenges and heartbreaks thru the lense of gratitude.
Most times it takes several years to realize something you perceived as awful actually brought you some sort of gift or blessing…
Start with small things…
One day I had a experience while driving that at first made me mad and aggravated but before I got all the way home I was thankful…
I drive by the beach most mornings…I love the ocean and so I drive by the beach in Beverly just about every day…
This particular morning a few years ago I was doing my thing and enjoying my morning when an…lets say aggressive driver…cut me off and caused me to completely change my direction…
I was mad but I went around the block and continued on my journey…ironically he got stopped by a light and ended up behind me but I wasn’t going to speed up for his sake.
As I cruised along slowly I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman running…
I heard her yell something…
I instinctually slowed down and began to look for an off-leash dog…
I noticed a small dog across the street standing with some women and just at the same moment that I noticed he was not attached to a leash he bolted out in front of my car…
I slammed on the brakes and stopped…the little dog could not be seen from the drivers seat and my heart was racing…
I looked at the ladies standing there and cried out…
“did I hit him?” and they all shook their heads “no”
Oh my was I relieved…
The lady who was running came and grabbed her pooch and I gathered myself and drove away shaking and saying to outloud to myself…
"Thank God I didn’t hit that little dog…
Thank you God thank you God thank you God."
Without thinking I said
"Thank God that jerk cut me off or he would have smooshed the little dog…"
A small little moment that made me realize sometimes things happen that we don’t particularly like but are indeed for the greater good.
Some of those moments are simple things like being cut off in traffic and some are bigger things like crashing a motorcycle…
I grew up on the back of my Dad’s bike…loved to ride…
Learned to ride my grampy’s little Honda 160 when I was 12 years old and cruised my neighborhood night after night that summer…loved it…
But Dad got rid of his bike and took up boating so for many years I didn’t get to ride…
I used to bug my husband to get a motorcycle so we could go riding but he wanted no part of it,
He had a crash on a dirt bike when he was 20 and it was enough to scare him into not wanting to ride again…
So back in 2004 I decided I wanted to ride and that I should go get my license and ride…I did just that…
Took the classes and got my motorcycle license and within a few weeks managed to talk Steve into buying me a bike too…
woohoo…I was thrilled.
I road up and down my street and around the block everyday for a week…
I woke up really early on a Sunday morning so I could go out and ride and go off my street and into traffic…
That was the greatest hour…I had so much fun…
And then I crashed.
It was my own inexperience that led to the accident and it was a relatively small crash but I messed my leg up pretty bad…
I couldn’t walk for 6 weeks and had to have surgery on my knee.
The first twist here is that I had this awful keloid scar on my knee from having surgeries when I was a young teen…this scar was ugly and we often railed on the doctor for doing such a poor job stitching me up…
It turned out to be a blessing and could have well saved my life…
When I crashed I smashed and twisted my leg up really bad, but did not break the skin at all…
my leg swelled enormously and looked like someone stuffed it with watermelons, from the ankle right to the hip…
My ugly keloid scar began to split open…within a few days I had a hole in my leg and a few days after that I had blood clots exiting that hole like nothing I’ve ever seen.
When I went to the doctor he too was amazed at the clotting that took place inside my leg and said it was a good thing my scar split open and let them out or they could have traveled thru my body and could have very well killed me if reaching my brain or lungs…
That scar I hated was a blessing.
So back to my crash…my husband had to come to the scene and ride my bike home…
The next day he went and got his motorcycle permit…
Then he took the bike for an inspection sticker (that shows you how little time I had the bike for)
Everyday he’d take the bike out for a ride saying he just bought it and he doesn’t want it to be a waste of money…
Each time he went out he was gone longer and longer…
Finally one day he came home after riding for 2 or 3 hours with this giant grin on his face and just exuberating joy…he looked at me and said
“The guys on real bikes look at me funny for riding this little girl bike, I gotta get me a Harley,”
Within a month he went and got a big boy bike and has been enjoying riding ever since…
My accident really spooked me and it’s taken me until just this year to get on and ride with him but now we are out doing what I wanted in the first place.
So if I hadn’t crashed my bike my husband would have never figured out how much joy he gets from riding and we wouldn’t be out together enjoying these hot summer nights…
Blessings are hidden in every moment of every day…
Good moments and bad moments alike…
I can find so many examples in my own life…
Like having my daughter while I was still in high school…
My family thought it was a disaster and that I was ruining my life…but I’ll bet they’d be the first ones today to say they wouldn’t want it any other way and they are grateful to have Jade and all her wonderfulness in our lives…
Or my adoption. I was adopted at birth and for most of my younger years I thought this was tragic. I thought somehow I missed out on something by not having my biological family…
But after meeting my birth mother I realized rather quickly what a blessing it was that she surrendered me for adoption and how lucky I am to have the parents I have. I was grateful for her decision. Grateful for the mother that did raise me and love me.
These examples I can find in my own life aren’t really relavant to anyone but me…
We all have to find our own comfort with life’s circumstances.
Our own gratitude for what God gives us.
Everything God gives us.
How do you find gratitude when facing the death of a loved one?
It’s not that you need to feel grateful that you lost someone…
But if you can just hold onto the knowledge of the continuance of life we believe in. it brings comfort…
This church and all I’ve learned here has been such a gift in my life and I am filled with gratitude for all those who have taught me, influenced me, loved me, prayed for me and with me.
But the biggest gift I’ve received from this church and the religion and philosophy of spiritualism is the knowledge and belief that life doesn’t end. It just changes form.
Realizing we are all spirits that get the honor of spending some years in this physical body changed the way my heart felt about death and dying.
When my great aunt died last summer I was pained and saddened because I wouldn’t have her physically in my life anymore…
But at the same time I felt so much joy for her as I watched her pass into the spirit side of life…I realized what a blessing it is that she will no longer suffer…
How lucky was I to have been loved by her for so many years?
what a blessing that I am surrounded with wonderful mediums who have brought her thru and proved to me the continuance of life…
Observing The law of gratitude makes us face our own responsibility for our own happiness…
If we are not grateful for all that we have already how will the universe see fit to give us more?
The law of attraction tells us that whatever we put out there is what we will attract…
so why not try being grateful?
Being happy with what is?
We are after all responsible for our own happiness or unhappiness right?
To realize all that we experience while living in these bodies is indeed a blessing and that we should be grateful for everything is a difficult task…
But I think it’s a task worth challenging yourself with.
I asked Stasia to sing Amazing Grace today because Grace is a synonym for gratitude….
Ironically
Grace is also a synonym for forgiveness…
So consider this…
having gratitude for those bad moments is in a way offering forgiveness for those bad moments…
God gave us the gift of his Grace…
I feel pulled to honor that gift and be grateful for all that I can about this life I’m lucky enough to live.
I guess the thought I’d like to leave you all with is this…
Living with gratitude is expressing appreciation to the universe and infinite spirit for the privilege of Being.
I left a short prayer on the benches and I thought if we all could start by saying it together it will help me to relax and get grounded and maybe some of these butterflies will go away…
Thank you, Universe, for your grace and guidance.For intuition, luck, hope and dreams. Thank you for the ever-present abundance that is reflected in each moment of my life.
I actually wrote this lecture a few years ago with the intention that I’d love to express to this congregation and my church family just how much I appreciate all that has been brought into my life from being a part of this wonderful community.
But in the years since it’s been put into words, it’s changed quite a bit and this last week it’s seen a major overhaul…
A few years before I found this church I went on a quest…
I really wanted to go to church on Sunday’s and have a spiritual community or family in my life.
Over a few years time I went to maybe 20 different churches.
I started with the Baptist church that I grew up at; I went to catholic mass, jewish temple, greek orthodox mass, congregational churches, assembly of god churches…
I went to lots of beautiful churches but none of them really resonated with me or made me feel I wanted to go back again the next week.
So I gave up.
I didn’t go to church for a few years.
Early summer 2007 my best friend Jill suffered the loss of her sister. It was unexpected and very tragic and it left Jill looking for answers.
We went for readings and saw mediums but still had not heard of “spiritual” churches.
That following winter Jill lost her birth mother in an accident. It was a very tough time and she found herself at an evening with the spirits at the YMCA where Maria Helvason was the medium. The messages Jill got that night were spot on and before she left Maria gave out her business card that said she was the assistant pastor here at the Swampscott church of spiritualism.
Ooohhh…a church of spiritualism?
We googled it and found out what time Sunday services were and planned on going.
The Sunday we planned for ended up being Easter Sunday and I had a small meltdown that morning thinking “it’s Easter Sunday and I can’t go to a church without Jesus”
So I didn’t go that day. But Jill did…
She called me before the day was out to say what a fantastic church it was and that they did indeed acknowledge Jesus on Easter Sunday. That made me happy and I decided I’d check it out the following week.
What a beautiful feeling from the moment I walked thru those purple doors. Smiling faces and positive energy overflowed the small sanctuary.
At one point a lovely lady turned and said to me “your new here aren’t you? My name is Val, what’s your name?”
“we have lunch after the service you should stay and eat.”
All those different churches I went to and not once did anyone say hello or invite me to fellowship…
This church is special and I am so grateful that we found it.
Pebbles and Andrea are the names of Jill’s sister and mother and thru their passing we found this community of love and family. They led us here in some odd way…and I’m grateful for that.
How many of you have had a tragic loss lead you to this church?
How hard is it to acknowledge that as a blessing?
Our 7th principle says:
“We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey natures physical and spiritual laws.”
The first time I heard the principles I knew right away I loved them, all of them…even if I didn’t quite understand all the details…
For instance what are nature’s physical and spirituals laws?
So I began reading books and googling to learn as much as I could about these laws and how they impact my life.
Dan Millman wrote a fantastic book called “Laws of Spirit”.
I recommend it to anyone who is interested in further definitions for natures physical and spiritual laws.
There are so many, and they seem to work with each other in many ways.
The law of balance
The law of choices
The law of presence
The law of faith
The law of action
The law of unity
The law of attraction…
My favorite, or the one that really speaks to me is the law of gratitude. Oprah had me start a gratitude journal years ago so it’s been a part of my life before discovering it was actually one of natures physical and spiritual laws.
The law of gratitude is vital to our being happy. I like being happy, so I thought I’d discuss gratitude. All sides of gratitude.
It’s easy to be grateful for all the wonderful things in our lives…like this church, or our friends and families.
I wake up each day and try to remember to be grateful for all that I am blessed with…starting with my breath and my health…my beautiful daughters and their health, my family, the roof over my head, the love of my dogs and the company of my good friends…
such easy things to be grateful for and all of us should try and remember to find time to be thankful for all the blessings in our lives.
The trick is finding the place where you can be grateful for EVERYTHING about life. There is a sense of peace that comes when you realize EVERYTHING is a blessing.
Yes everything.
That’s a tough one.
How can you suffer the loss of a loved one and find gratitude?
How do you live with disease and illness and be grateful for that?
How the heck are we supposed to be grateful for things that cause us pain and heartache?
Honestly, I don’t have the answer to that.
It’s an individual choice and we each have to find the right eyes for seeing our own challenges and heartbreaks thru the lense of gratitude.
Most times it takes several years to realize something you perceived as awful actually brought you some sort of gift or blessing…
Start with small things…
One day I had a experience while driving that at first made me mad and aggravated but before I got all the way home I was thankful…
I drive by the beach most mornings…I love the ocean and so I drive by the beach in Beverly just about every day…
This particular morning a few years ago I was doing my thing and enjoying my morning when an…lets say aggressive driver…cut me off and caused me to completely change my direction…
I was mad but I went around the block and continued on my journey…ironically he got stopped by a light and ended up behind me but I wasn’t going to speed up for his sake.
As I cruised along slowly I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman running…
I heard her yell something…
I instinctually slowed down and began to look for an off-leash dog…
I noticed a small dog across the street standing with some women and just at the same moment that I noticed he was not attached to a leash he bolted out in front of my car…
I slammed on the brakes and stopped…the little dog could not be seen from the drivers seat and my heart was racing…
I looked at the ladies standing there and cried out…
“did I hit him?” and they all shook their heads “no”
Oh my was I relieved…
The lady who was running came and grabbed her pooch and I gathered myself and drove away shaking and saying to outloud to myself…
"Thank God I didn’t hit that little dog…
Thank you God thank you God thank you God."
Without thinking I said
"Thank God that jerk cut me off or he would have smooshed the little dog…"
A small little moment that made me realize sometimes things happen that we don’t particularly like but are indeed for the greater good.
Some of those moments are simple things like being cut off in traffic and some are bigger things like crashing a motorcycle…
I grew up on the back of my Dad’s bike…loved to ride…
Learned to ride my grampy’s little Honda 160 when I was 12 years old and cruised my neighborhood night after night that summer…loved it…
But Dad got rid of his bike and took up boating so for many years I didn’t get to ride…
I used to bug my husband to get a motorcycle so we could go riding but he wanted no part of it,
He had a crash on a dirt bike when he was 20 and it was enough to scare him into not wanting to ride again…
So back in 2004 I decided I wanted to ride and that I should go get my license and ride…I did just that…
Took the classes and got my motorcycle license and within a few weeks managed to talk Steve into buying me a bike too…
woohoo…I was thrilled.
I road up and down my street and around the block everyday for a week…
I woke up really early on a Sunday morning so I could go out and ride and go off my street and into traffic…
That was the greatest hour…I had so much fun…
And then I crashed.
It was my own inexperience that led to the accident and it was a relatively small crash but I messed my leg up pretty bad…
I couldn’t walk for 6 weeks and had to have surgery on my knee.
The first twist here is that I had this awful keloid scar on my knee from having surgeries when I was a young teen…this scar was ugly and we often railed on the doctor for doing such a poor job stitching me up…
It turned out to be a blessing and could have well saved my life…
When I crashed I smashed and twisted my leg up really bad, but did not break the skin at all…
my leg swelled enormously and looked like someone stuffed it with watermelons, from the ankle right to the hip…
My ugly keloid scar began to split open…within a few days I had a hole in my leg and a few days after that I had blood clots exiting that hole like nothing I’ve ever seen.
When I went to the doctor he too was amazed at the clotting that took place inside my leg and said it was a good thing my scar split open and let them out or they could have traveled thru my body and could have very well killed me if reaching my brain or lungs…
That scar I hated was a blessing.
So back to my crash…my husband had to come to the scene and ride my bike home…
The next day he went and got his motorcycle permit…
Then he took the bike for an inspection sticker (that shows you how little time I had the bike for)
Everyday he’d take the bike out for a ride saying he just bought it and he doesn’t want it to be a waste of money…
Each time he went out he was gone longer and longer…
Finally one day he came home after riding for 2 or 3 hours with this giant grin on his face and just exuberating joy…he looked at me and said
“The guys on real bikes look at me funny for riding this little girl bike, I gotta get me a Harley,”
Within a month he went and got a big boy bike and has been enjoying riding ever since…
My accident really spooked me and it’s taken me until just this year to get on and ride with him but now we are out doing what I wanted in the first place.
So if I hadn’t crashed my bike my husband would have never figured out how much joy he gets from riding and we wouldn’t be out together enjoying these hot summer nights…
Blessings are hidden in every moment of every day…
Good moments and bad moments alike…
I can find so many examples in my own life…
Like having my daughter while I was still in high school…
My family thought it was a disaster and that I was ruining my life…but I’ll bet they’d be the first ones today to say they wouldn’t want it any other way and they are grateful to have Jade and all her wonderfulness in our lives…
Or my adoption. I was adopted at birth and for most of my younger years I thought this was tragic. I thought somehow I missed out on something by not having my biological family…
But after meeting my birth mother I realized rather quickly what a blessing it was that she surrendered me for adoption and how lucky I am to have the parents I have. I was grateful for her decision. Grateful for the mother that did raise me and love me.
These examples I can find in my own life aren’t really relavant to anyone but me…
We all have to find our own comfort with life’s circumstances.
Our own gratitude for what God gives us.
Everything God gives us.
How do you find gratitude when facing the death of a loved one?
It’s not that you need to feel grateful that you lost someone…
But if you can just hold onto the knowledge of the continuance of life we believe in. it brings comfort…
This church and all I’ve learned here has been such a gift in my life and I am filled with gratitude for all those who have taught me, influenced me, loved me, prayed for me and with me.
But the biggest gift I’ve received from this church and the religion and philosophy of spiritualism is the knowledge and belief that life doesn’t end. It just changes form.
Realizing we are all spirits that get the honor of spending some years in this physical body changed the way my heart felt about death and dying.
When my great aunt died last summer I was pained and saddened because I wouldn’t have her physically in my life anymore…
But at the same time I felt so much joy for her as I watched her pass into the spirit side of life…I realized what a blessing it is that she will no longer suffer…
How lucky was I to have been loved by her for so many years?
what a blessing that I am surrounded with wonderful mediums who have brought her thru and proved to me the continuance of life…
Observing The law of gratitude makes us face our own responsibility for our own happiness…
If we are not grateful for all that we have already how will the universe see fit to give us more?
The law of attraction tells us that whatever we put out there is what we will attract…
so why not try being grateful?
Being happy with what is?
We are after all responsible for our own happiness or unhappiness right?
To realize all that we experience while living in these bodies is indeed a blessing and that we should be grateful for everything is a difficult task…
But I think it’s a task worth challenging yourself with.
I asked Stasia to sing Amazing Grace today because Grace is a synonym for gratitude….
Ironically
Grace is also a synonym for forgiveness…
So consider this…
having gratitude for those bad moments is in a way offering forgiveness for those bad moments…
God gave us the gift of his Grace…
I feel pulled to honor that gift and be grateful for all that I can about this life I’m lucky enough to live.
I guess the thought I’d like to leave you all with is this…
Living with gratitude is expressing appreciation to the universe and infinite spirit for the privilege of Being.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
change
change seems such a simple concept...
yet how difficult it is to effect real change and to accept the reality of those changes...
why do we get stuck in the same dysfunctional patterns that hold us back or thrust us into situations we'd rather not face?
i'm learning it's those situations that hold the lessons we MUST face and conquer for growth to truly occur...
those patterns get repeated because we didn't find the true answers and we didn't learn the lesson we needed to push us further into Being...
i want change...
i dream about change...
i long for change...
and even though i see HUGE changes in myself,
how i think and what i do and how i feel...
the changes i want, dream and long for are still out of reach...
it's not that my arms aren't long enough...
it's that the universe is still waiting for me to learn the lessons i need to learn so that i may move towards those changes with the right mind and best of possibilities ahead of me...
yet how difficult it is to effect real change and to accept the reality of those changes...
why do we get stuck in the same dysfunctional patterns that hold us back or thrust us into situations we'd rather not face?
i'm learning it's those situations that hold the lessons we MUST face and conquer for growth to truly occur...
those patterns get repeated because we didn't find the true answers and we didn't learn the lesson we needed to push us further into Being...
i want change...
i dream about change...
i long for change...
and even though i see HUGE changes in myself,
how i think and what i do and how i feel...
the changes i want, dream and long for are still out of reach...
it's not that my arms aren't long enough...
it's that the universe is still waiting for me to learn the lessons i need to learn so that i may move towards those changes with the right mind and best of possibilities ahead of me...
Sunday, June 20, 2010
the tree
there is this tree by the river...
a tree i get the pleasure of driving by at least once a day...
this particular tree is stunning in it naked form...
but somehow when the leaves appear to adorn it's bare branches, it seems to take away from it's striking beauty...
this beautiful favorite tree along the river is losing strength from all the storms and rain of the past spring and i can see it struggle to remain standing...
it seems aware of the beauty of it's own frame and during this struggle has only adorned half itself with leaves...
so now i drive by the river and this particular tree is even more eye catching, with it's beautifully formed branches bare against the green of it's living half...
reminds me that even death is a thing of beauty...
a tree i get the pleasure of driving by at least once a day...
this particular tree is stunning in it naked form...
but somehow when the leaves appear to adorn it's bare branches, it seems to take away from it's striking beauty...
this beautiful favorite tree along the river is losing strength from all the storms and rain of the past spring and i can see it struggle to remain standing...
it seems aware of the beauty of it's own frame and during this struggle has only adorned half itself with leaves...
so now i drive by the river and this particular tree is even more eye catching, with it's beautifully formed branches bare against the green of it's living half...
reminds me that even death is a thing of beauty...
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