Dear God/ess, My friend Sheila, Astrology’s Astrologer, and I went to the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg, Maryland, today.Ulysses came with us and as you can see in the picture, he was quite popular among the young people there.
Our Lady Gutalupe in the picture is the site of several major miracles in the recovery of Ulysses’ Cancer over this past winter. So to suddenly be visited by this group of energetic, athletic and happy adoring fans, who demanded to have their picture taken with Ulysses, felt like an omen of continued good health for this wonderful dog.
So I want to recognize this happy moment, and pause a moment to appreciate it.
Dear God/ess, Today we met an old friend of Tomaso’s and we had a refreshingly honest talk about our lives, especially the lives of this person and Tomaso and what they went through together over the years, especially 35 odd years ago.
The conversation reminded me of the old conscious raising days of the 1970′s: No idle gossip, just an honest assessment of where we used to be and how far we have come, as well as how far we still have to go, in a process of never arriving, simply enjoying wherever we happen to be.
I am also noticing more and more people around me being 60 something and older, sitting face to face with one another, trying to figure out their lives in relationship with each other and all the other relationships in their lives.
You don’t have to die in order to be reborn. We are always in a process of being and doing, of relaxing and producing, of ebbing and flowing.
There is no end in sight.
The day begins, and then it ends.
The dark night of the soul need not last forevermore. We need not hold on to the doubts we have always had about our lives.
Yes, we look back over a long life well lived. And yes we can learn to love all of it no matter what we’ve done or not done. We can change from a miser to a person who experiences new birth and a Life Of Love.
We can learn to lift up the sadness of the world through the eyes of compassion.
Dear God/ess, Our dear friend Reverend Jo-an died early this morning at 0406. Ever since hearing the news, I’ve given up trying to function in the normal way people go about their days.
It has been a growth process for all of us who love her. And there are truly a great number of us who do.
Jo-an loved this Prayer Blog. She had her partner Sheila, Astrology’s Astrologer, read the prayers to her every day, after she got sick. Before that, she’d mull over them and discuss them with me, and I knew she appreciated them.
Jo-an was my mother’s best friend, and I kept feeling Mom’s presence around these last few weeks. This was my sign that Jo-an was readying herself for the passageway in uncharted territory.
This is the passageway that all of us will make.
Jo-an is a mystical soul. She felt and knew a great deal more than she wanted to tell. Her bottomless brown eyes told the rest of the story.
I went with Jo-an when she gave one of her last weddings, in the spring of this year. She managed to perform the wedding with much bravado, befitting the Leo Performer that she was. In fact, she just turned 87 years on July 23.
Jo-an was a feminist in life and now too, as I feel her magnificent presence. She loves her daughters and her female friends. She also loved Tomaso, whose male/ female qualities are well integrated into the Renaissance Human whom he is.
A feeling of emptiness widens in our hearts at times such as these. We fill the emptiness with nothing but love. Jo-an was saying the last few weeks of her life that the Love she was feeling was Huge and Uncontainable.
So we allow the emptiness we feel to be exactly as it is, and we allow it to expand into the Universal Void. As we do so, it transforms into something else. It joins with the wind and the rain and the aurora, the Owl and the Oak as the leaves prepare to make their seasonal change.
We rest awhile in our joy and we remember the grief which really is joy’s shadow side. We cry real tears.
We know that life is short, and we will not be far behind.
Dear God/ess, Julia Rogers Hammrick is on our radio show this week, 11/23/2010 at 6 PM/EST. Joan and I have had her on the show before and she is an absolute delight!
Her book, “Choosing Easy World” was published this year and we will be discussing and experiencing the concepts in her book. Julia will teach us how to consciously choose Easy World over the mindset of resistance, struggle and strife. I think Julia would agree that we aspire to Easy World right here on the Pray To Heal Blog, and everyday, we manage to sustain it.
In the process of fixing up this Pray To Heal Blog, which is an exercise in reflection, contemplation and naturally, prayer, I came to the realization that taken as a whole, what is contained here is a stand alone spiritual practice. Each entry is a jewel placed in the heart of all human kind, as well as the trees, beasts and stones.
Yet isn’t that what our kindred souls here on the Internet and elsewhere are all successfully achieving? We reach out to all souls everywhere and encourage a letting go of all that has gone before.
That leaves all of us right here in the Present Moment, the only true reality and preferred place to be.
We are exactly where we are supposed to be. This is exactly what the word and celebration of “Thanksgiving” is all about. We gather together with family and friends and experience the true meaning of communing: communing with Self, with spirit, and the preciousness of those who are with us today.
We cherish the moment and surrender as we move on to the next breath, the next step, the next Holy Peace of the season.
As we cultivate love and compassion in even the most difficult moments with even the most perceived difficult people, let us remember that Love and Compassion are action verbs and are not weak or sentimental. They demand the highest level of courage and integrity that anyone is capable of.
I spent the last several hours with Ulysses, and just returned from a romp in the park. I asked him to be “good” around the dogs we were without a doubt going to encounter.
He gave me a side long look which told me to shove it.
Ulysses does not like other dogs, except for a select few small dogs. And Mukunda. He adored Mukunda and still does.
Ulysses has a quiet, constant awareness about him. He is awake and tuned in. He is honest about who he is.
If he chooses not to like other dogs, he has a reason. Before I’d say he was just stubborn. But he has a natural wisdom which I trust and surrender to.
We may never understand how Divine Intelligence works, yet when we come to realize that nothing else can be trusted, we find real freedom and peace of mind.
Acquiring great material gain can appear to offer simple solutions to emotional and spiritual discomforts. But the inner quest of spirit is a subtle one because at the heart of it is the search for purpose, meaning and the sacred beauty and mystery of life.
Prayer Prescriptions For Nurse Healers
(The Prayer Prescription Series)
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