A Lovely Day

Last Friday was a lovely day for many reasons, but for three in particular...

1. In the morning I saw a beautiful rainbow reaching up and across the horizon. I haven't seen a rainbow in a long time and it was appreciated.
2. While driving back to work following my lunch break I passed by a local middle school. There's a brick retaining wall there and twenty or so kids sitting on it, swaying from side to side and as my vehicle got closer they started pumping their fists indicating I should honk. I appeased them and honked and laughed when they victoriously threw their hands up in the air, all while rhythmically swaying from left to right, left to right, left to right.
3. Later in the afternoon I smiled when I noticed Jesus Clouds. A picture perfect scene of the Heavens' light shining down and being filtered by the clouds, so that one can literally see the rays of sun beaming towards the Earth.
   

True Living Project

You must visit Sabrina Ward Harrison's website and watch the True Living Project "slideshow." It's completely moving.

Focus

I am trying to focus on love and peace and hope and progress. This day to day life I lead can be so uneventful, so frustrating, so nothing, so repetitive. It's easy to succumb to the 8:00 to 5:00 work schedule--to work, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat. It's easy to become consumed by anger regarding the stupidest things and to fall into a person I don't necessarily want to be. I mean, it's not that I become this horrible person. That's not the case. But there are moments where anger swells within me. Times where I don't care. Days where I'm not productive in pursuing a greater life.

I need to shift to the good. Need to keep my head up, my heart open. I don't want all of this "noise" to get the best of me, to fill my head and take me over. It's important to shed all that weighs me down. To shake off the negative. To wash off daily the dirt of yesterday.

Each day is clean. A new beginning, an opportunity for rebirth, a chance to make some small difference in my life and in the lives of those around me. So I ask God to help me focus, to help me be present in place and time, and to work steadily with peace in my heart.

Love and peace. Peace and love.

Peace Overflows in the Tub

I took a bath yesterday evening for the first time since I don't know when. Please don't be mistaken, I do shower daily, but a bath is a rare occasion. Anyway...

I was surrounded by everything calming: warm water, bubbles, the soft glow of candlelight, poetry. I was serenaded by sweet music, as well as by the steady rhythm of Butkus breathing, who was sleeping by the side of the tub thankful that he did not have to take a bath. The big boy is not a fan of water unless it is in his water bowl.

The experience of the bath was ever so peaceful and for that moment in time my life was perfect. (It is in the little and often unnoticed things where perfection resides.) I was where I was meant to be right there and then.

Instead of feeling lost in this world, I was lost in the eloquent language of poetry...

But surely death must possess that one tiny,
Intricate light created by the small certainty
Of its own name. And, darling, I know this too,
That in the moment that death comes to cover you,
Lying down carefully over your body, fitting itself
So well, forming belly to belly, matching
Its spreading fingers exactly to your open hands,
Finding its own thighs and its heart and its motion
By finding yours, in that moment, just like a flame
Catching hold suddenly in the center of a lantern
And rising then to fill the dark void of the forest
With its place, death will have no choice,
Must be transformed, illuminated, filled to its farthest
Boundaries by all the glorious sins and virtues
Of your real and radiant grace.
-Excerpt from "The Light Inside of Death" by Pattiann Rogers in her book of poetry entitled Splitting and Binding

Instead of feeling lost in this world, I felt found in ideas. I was stripped of my worries, fears, doubts, and insecurities. All of the "noes" slipped away the moment I slipped under the still water. I was blanketed in serenity, hope, joy, and truth. I was exposed and I was me. I was real. Yes.

I prayed to God that the peace would settle in my soul and linger. That everything that has been holding me back from pursuing peace daily, would wash away like the dirt from my body. I prayed to come to know Him better and through knowing Him, that I would come to know myself even better and realize His dream for my life and fulfill it. I prayed to live and I mean really, truly live.