Maybe it is the theme for this month, but I have found myself singing and/or listening to Julie Andrews sing A Few of My Favorite Things several times this month. I love this song, especially as a reminder to practice play because it is all about the things that one enjoys and loves, like “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, Brown paper packages tied up with strings, These are a few of my favorite things.”
So I started thinking about some of my favorite things.
Cuddling with my kittens and having them lick me.
Baking cookies with friends and sharing home made meals and creating memories
Read moreOk so I am all about practicing play this month. So I figured I would make myself laugh and share some cartoons I love and maybe a few jokes and or stories that make me laugh. Hope you can see the humor and laugh with me
Read moreDear God,
You have a sense of humor. Here I am in the most stressful month of my life and the spiritual practice you have led me to focus on is play. Here I am in a space when there are more things on my to do list, then there appears to be time for the things I want to do list. Final projects are coming in from my students, I am doing a record number of Pampered chef parties in a two week period for myself, editing a document for a client, planning my upcoming winter course, meeting with clients, facilitating groups, and making time for day to day activities like sleeping, eating, showering, time with Zoe and time with the cats. I would like to say I am busy, however, I am working at releasing that word from my vocabulary.
Read moreDear God
So this is my last time this month to write to you about openness. So today I just want to thank you for all you have shown me and taught me about being open. You have shined a light on all the closed signs I had in my heart, mind, and soul and helped me to replace them with open signs.
I thought the possibility of my Pampered Chef team being green this month was closed, but you said watch me, I am about to do a new thing and you opened up possibilities that I could not see before.
I thought I had lost a team member who seemed like she was shutting down and you said watch and you reopened the relationship. When you did, you opened up a level of honesty in the relationship which did not exist before. You moved her from a position of living in fear and watering someone else’s yard to realizing she needed to water her own.
Read moreSeriously, I always think I am far more evolved then I am and then you find a way to humble me and open me up to possibilities beyond my imagination. The most recent was this weekend, when you sent Diana over to talk to me about this Thrive for Women program. Honestly, I was not sure. I accepted her three-day sample for a few reasons. First, it was free and I had choice about what I did or did not do with it. Second, she was not pushy and never made a comment about my weight. Third, because my friend Kelly raves about this program and she doesn’t rave about many products.
I have always been very accepting of what comes my way. I had learned to find ways of staying focused, balanced and positive when my paratransit service were virtually eliminated. I have adjusted and thanked you for the decline in my health. I have always been open to seeing the blessings in all situations. In part because my Bubby had always told me if I could see the blessings in any situation, then I knew I would be okay.
Read moreDear Sharon,
Yeah I am writing this one to you. Gurl, all month long you have been writing about nurturing, but seriously what have you done to nurture yourself this month. Not enough. So slow down and let’s take some time to smell the roses. Here are a list of things you love doing and have not done for a while. So even though we are moving to a new spiritual practice in October, let’s work on being open to being more nurturing of your own self so you can continue to be nurturing to others.
© Buy yourself a bunch of fresh flowers and display them where you'll see them often. Allow yourself to stop and admire them. Do not look at the price, you are worthy.
© Sit in the warm sunshine and read a good book or magazine.
Read moreI would like to be able to come to you and say that I treat myself amazingly well. However, I try to be more honest with you then I am with anyone else, including myself. I am awesome at saying I am going to do something, but I break promises with myself all the time. Like tonight I said I was going to take some time to be a shlump and I did not. I did not walk as much as I should have today. I ate fairly healthy today which is a good thing, but probably mostly because I have been intentional about keeping the junk food out of the house. I did get enough sleep and I have paid myself compliments, but I am not taking as good care of my body as I need to. I am working on treating myself as well as I treat others. As Iyanla Vanzant reminded me recently, at present I am allowing others to be thieves in my life and they do not even know that I am allowing them to do that. Well maybe they will if they read this. LOL
I am trying to think of myself as a little girl and remembering to nurture myself the way I would nurture my child. So there are some things I am really good at. I am good at telling myself that I love myself and how amazing I am. I am good at remembering that I am never alone and I am surrounded by your love, your strength and the supporters you have bought into my life to bring me through the times when I feel like I am struggling.
Read moreThank you for waking me up this morning. My friends were kind of surprised to see me up and moving so early this morning. I try to get up by 8 am every morning so I have a routine and stick to it, but sometimes I give myself a sleep in morning as a way of nurturing my body, mind, and soul. I take this as quiet time to just rest, cuddle with my wife, and allow you to speak to me in my dreams.
There is something about cuddling that is so nurturing for me. When I was younger I used to cuddle with my stuffed animals or with my dog Puggy. As I grew up I found that I enjoyed cuddling with my partner of the time. There is nothing like cuddling and being held.
Read moreSo here we are at the end of August and it is amazing to me how much I have thought about meaning lately. It is interesting how I have been thinking about why I have been led to sources of wisdom and revelation at certain times. For example, I was looking for a book a few months ago and was drawn to a book by Mark Nepo, which I thought would be awesome for our book club, called Inside the Miracle. It is a gathering of his writings which draw on his experience and transformation because of his battle with cancer. Most of the people in our book club have had cancer and so I thought this was a book that would really speak to them.
Little did I know that I was drawn to this book for another reason. One of my dearest friends was diagnosed with brain cancer. Reading this book while journeying with her helped me to enter into the miracle that was to happen in her life. It gave me new understandings of my own health challenges and the journey to wholeness which was coming as a result of this opportunity.
Read moreDear God,
Honestly, sometimes it is so easy to see the meaning in what is happening, but sometimes life seems so busy it is hard to hear you speaking. So right now I am working on slowing down and being intentional about having the time to listen.
What I have learned is that taking the time to listen is like taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where I have to enter life and lean in and listen.
This past week I have been reminded that life is unpredictable. By listening to you and your guidance I have found what I needed to lift me up and been able to find new ways of thinking about things. Even what initially felt like the worst of situations became transformative and life giving because you challenged me to enter into the situation, sit with you, and grow.
Read moreSo most of last week I was thinking about listening and what I wanted to talk to you about in terms of listening and to be honest I was not sure what I wanted to write about. I had been working on more actively listening to others, listening to my body, listening to the sounds around me and was feeling pretty good about how well I was listening to the Universe. Then it hit me, you were listening to me. So I want to thank you for listening to my prayers and the meditations of my heart.
I always tell you talk to me like I am five. Make it plain. Make it simple. Make it clear. I need answers that are so visible that it is unmistakable. So here I am praying about whether I should be thinking and working on repromoting to Director status with Pampered Chef. I wanted to make sure this was what I was supposed to do and not just what I would like to do because of the benefits.
Read moreSo many people in my life have inspired me with their ability to be kind. Tristine Rainer was write when he said that writing about these people help me to internalize and possess the very qualities that intrigued me the most. I have been doing this for a while and realized as I sat down today that I have internalized some of the qualities of someone who showed me intense kindness when I was in graduate school.
Her name is Dr Diane M Samdahl and she is one of those people who has left her name inscribed on my heart. She taught me so much about life, not just recreation and leisure studies. When I look back on my relationship and journey with her, there is one moment in particular that I will remember forever.
Read moreBeing kind is such an important practice to me. I have experienced so many random acts of kindness in my life and am mindful of how it made me feel. I am also mindful of how I feel when I am able to perform acts of kindness with others. So many people in my life have inspired me with their ability to be kind. It is not that I was jealous of their ability to practice kindness. Rather, they inspired me to possess and develop those same qualities within myself. One of the things I have learned to do is write about those people who intrigue me. As Tristine Rainer suggests, in The New Diary, in doing so I begin to internalize and possess those very qualities.
There have been so many amazingly kind people in my life. The one who taught me the most about kindness is the one who opened her heart and soul to me, my mother.
Read moreThe universe has a sense of humor. I had been thinking about kindness and praying for inspiration about what to write about. I am pretty good at practicing kindness and look for opportunities each day to be kind to others. I so often have focused on how I feel when I am doing something for others. I had not taken time to think about how I feel when someone does something kind for me. Yesterday, however, a friend of mine surprised me with an act of kindness that touched my heart.
It was one of those totally unexpected kind of things. My friend Venetia Carey is a Pink Zebra consultant. We met last December at a vending event we did together.
Read moreOver the last week, I have been listening to what others say as a way of avoiding responsibility for the injustice and inhumanity in the world. One thing I have heard people do is to call it something else. Rather than name the injustice behind what is happening in a situation, people will search for alternate explanations as to why a situation exists. I have heard people argue it is actually better this way or that the oppressed group actually prefers it this way. I have heard people mask their inhumanity behind humor or claims of innocence, saying I didn’t mean it. There is this belief that by saying that, that it wipes away the injustice and inhumanity of what is said or done. I have heard other say that the reason bad things happen to people is that they are just bad people. Whether intentional or not, each of these patterns and ways of thinking contributes to the inhumanity and injustice in the world.
Read moreSince I started this personal reflection justice, why we engage and why we don’t, I have come to realize there are no easy answers. One of the things I have come to realize is that in some respects we do not even realize that we are being inhumane. Several years ago, I was at a meeting and overheard two philosophers talking about slavery. One philosopher said that the perfect form of slavery was when one enjoyed being a slave. The other philosopher disagreed and said that the perfect form of slavery was when you no longer realized that you were even enslaved. The ironic part is that when we think of the word slavery we do not think of ourselves, but in some respect, each of us is enslaved in a system that trains us to be inhumane, conditions us throughout our lives to contribute to the inhumanity of others. Whether one is part of a dominant or subordinate group in our culture, the enslavement exists and often times we are not even aware of our role in the system or of the system itself.
Read moreWhen I was in seminary, I took a course on advocacy and organizing. One of the questions we were asked to think about was what we felt was the most pressing social issue in contemporary society. Then and now, it is hard for me to pick just one, as there are so many issues that seem important for different reasons. I could talk about the global exploitation of people in developing countries or the trafficking of women as sexual slaves and prostitutes or violence against women or poverty or hate crimes or systemic injustice. My list of issues has grown over the last over the last 10 years. Trying to pick one over the other makes me feel as if I am saying one issue is more pressing than the other, as if I am trying to prioritize them. This is hard for me to do because I think they are all important for different reasons and to different groups of people. At the root of all these issues is a common thread which contributed to their existence. Ultimately, I have come to realize that the most pressing social issue in contemporary society is our inhumanity for and towards each other.
Read moreIt has been a challenging few weeks and I know there is more to come. The awesome thing for me is that I know that even when it may feel like you are not there for me, you really are. Over the course of my journey with you, I have learned a few key lessons for which I am truly grateful. Maybe the first is about where I put my focus. It is easy when I am going through to focus on what is going wrong and what you are not doing for me.
The reality is that even when I am going through, you are doing things for me.
Read moreDear God,
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for giving me so many things in my life that give me joy. Sometimes I do not realize how joy filled my life is until I talk with someone who has forgotten how to have joy in their lives. Life for me is not about just enduring, but about enjoying. Maybe it is because I have come close to dying a few times in my life, that I am able to find joy in just about everything, even going to the bathroom. Having experienced what it is like to not be able to perform a function we take for granted, I find joy in being able to do so multiple times a day. Whoo hoo!
Read moreSo here is the thing I have been thinking about so much lately, the relationship between joy and jealousy. It seems that when I am feeling jealous of someone, it is because I have lost the joy and the ability to celebrate my own life for what it is. I become jealous because I am comparing myself to them and not being happy that we are not both exactly what we are supposed to be at this point in our journeys. I have been talking a lot about this with my friend Eileen and how there is this fine line between joy and jealousy.
When I feel jealousy it is because I am not practicing joy for myself and others.
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