It’s like a tug of war.
I want to think I am in control,
But I know I am not.
Each time I attempt to control,
I make my world smaller.
So I let go
I remind myself I am not in charge
As I do,
As I open myself up,
My world expands.
I became part of that expansion
I become part of the present
I become a part of this web of connections
I become part of something
Amazing
Deep
Wonderful
Exciting
Unexplainable.
Yucky or Yummy
They were five, six and seven,
Yet they knew how to cuss, gossip, slander,
And speak words of hate.
They were young,
But they had learned how to
Hurt others with their words
It was time to let them taste
What their words felt like
So they had to sip on listerine
Try eating a snail
A variety of things that tasted
What they called yucky
What they had to spit out
What made them want to throw up
This is what God tastes when you
Speak words of hurt and hate
Is this what you want to feed God
Spiritual Apples
Growing up I was taught
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
But staying healthy
Requires more than A piece of fruit.
I still eat an apple a day,
but the following keeps me growing spiritually
A good heart a day
Keeps the enemy away
Paying attention each day,
Reduces the stress in daily life
Seeing the beauty in the simplicity of life,
Keeps the clutter away.
Being present,
Keeps me out of the danger zones of the past and future.
Focus
Words are so powerful
They tell me about you
How you see the world
What you see in me
When you speak
Ill of others
Justified or not,
Gossip or libel
The focus is on
Their inadequacies
When you speak
Positive of others
When you could
Have done otherwise
You focus on your own
Needs for forgiveness and growth
What words are you speaking
Where is your focus
Is it on the gifts or inadequacies
Is it on damaging others or
Helping ourselves grow
Let’s shift our focus
Stop talking about others
Behind their backs
Find words of forgiveness
For self and others
Find words of inspiration and growth
For self and others
Focus on your focus
Hold on to the Mystery
“You see God so clearly,” he said
He was wrong.
There are glimpses,
moments, and
experiences, but
they are surrounded by Mystery.
They transcend description.
They are Yugen.
They are those moments too deep
And too mysterious for words.
They are Yugen
Yugen is dim,
Deep
Mysterious.
The experiences which transcend
Know we have experienced something holy.
Profound grace.
Questions
Questions
I keep asking them
Because I want to know the truth
I want more than a superficial answer
I want a deep understanding.
Questions
They are like a quest
One leads to another
Which leads to another
And they lead me to a deeper understanding
They help to have a deeper understanding of the truth
Questions
I ask them because I can
I ask them because I have the right to
I ask them because I want to know
I ask them because they bring me
To a truth
Which can only be answered
Through questions
How God Feels
The shame, the silence, the pain
God has felt this too
I was shamed for my enthusiasm
I was silenced and not given space
I have been told I was too kind
I was not given room to explain
God has felt this too.
I have been told I was not welcome
I was told I was too enthusiastic
I have been told I do not fit in
I have been told I am not relevant
God has felt this too
I have felt the pain, experienced the humiliation, felt the denial
God has felt this too.
I have felt the love, I have felt the joy, I have felt the companionship
God has felt this too.
I have been validated for my feelings
I have felt appreciated by others
I have known what it is like to be told thank you
I have felt the warmth of someone’s hand
God has felt this too
What I appreciate about my life
Is that everything I have felt
God has felt this too.
Practice, Practice, Practice
So I am sitting here thinking about the word practice. I have come to realize that I have this love hate relationship with the word. On the one hand I realize I cannot master anything if I do not practice. I cannot make something a habit unless I do it so often that it becomes part of my daily routine. There are things which I have practiced doing so often and for so long that I now just do them automatically.
My spiritual journey has been filled with opportunities to practice. It has not always been easy, but it has been important that I remain true to my practice. Several years ago I remember a friend of mine wrote about keeping a gratitude journal for November. It prompted me to keep one daily, not just in November. At first doing so daily was not easy. There were days I did not want to do it, but I pushed myself through and now it is just part of my practice and if I do not do it, I feel off. It is like something is incomplete and missing in my day.
Read moreSilence
Symphony
Intuition
Learning
Experiencing
Nearness
Connection
Eternal
Let it Go
Leave
Embrace
Travel
Internal
Transformation
Guidance
Oneness
And The Little Boy Said
We all go through rough times in life. It is easy to want to blame others for our situation, but it is not about others, but ourselves. I keep learning and relearning that when I blame others, it just keeps the sadness and negativity in control of my life. The longer I hold on to my negativity and sadness, the more of my joy and wealth I give away. Sometimes we just need someone to help us refocus.
Decades ago, I worked in a summer camp and had a little boy named Mikey. He was learning how to be away from his mom for the first time in his life. He would come in crying and I began playing this game with him to redirect his energy. I would say can you make a monster face and he would. How about a sad face and he would and before you knew it he was okay and then we could go play with the other kids.
One day we were playing the water when I realized I had lost a piece of jewelry that I never took off. It brought tears to my face and no matter how hard I tried I could not stop the tears from rolling down my face, and then this little boy gave me a gift I will never forget. I tried to capture this in a poem about us and this experience.
Read morePouring Libations
One of my favorite theologians is Henri Nouwen. His writing is simplistic, but powerful. He brings you into his life and allows you to walk with him in his life through every possible emotion. You learn, cry, laugh, feel compassion, and grow with him in his and your own journey. The last few years have been hard for me and for my family. I have had to say good bye to over thirty friends, acquaintances and loved ones.
There are days I have wondered if I would ever stop grieving. I still wake up some mornings wishing my parents who transitioned in 2001 and 2005, my first two funerals, were still here. Sometimes I just want to pick up the phone and call them. There is not a day that I look at our prayer and meditation garden and do not think of my friend Laura who committed suicide about 18 months ago. She helped us move so much dirt into that garden and planted a butterfly bush, which stayed green in the snow when she passed over. Losing so many people the last few years has reminded me of my own mortality.
Read moreBecoming the Tree
Dear God,
I know you never put more on us then we can bear, but this year has been filled with challenges. If I had to pick a word for that I have learned this year, it would be tenacity. I have learned to have the determination to rise about difficult circumstances. It does not mean it has been easy, but I am making myself rise. I am finding the strength within myself to keep on going.
There have been days when I felt so deeply and did see my own strength, but I would remember to release the fears that were obscuring my vision. You found your way of reminding me to be like the Tree of Heaven, the tree Betty Smith wrote about in her novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She wrote, “Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first time or last time. Then your time on Earth will be filled with joy.”
Read moreThe Earth
The earth births spring
The earth births summer
The earth births fall
The earth births winter
The earth has gone through trials
The earth has gone through challenges
The earth has endured
The earth keeps birthing
The earth inspires me
The earth keeps me growing
The earth inspires me to endure
The earth reminds to give birth
The earth is the earth
The earth is I am
The earth is me
I am who I am
Through the Storm
Drawn into the depths of despair,
you pulled me to the safety of your arms.
You have always rushed to save me
When you have heard me crying out for you.
When you hear my cries of helplessness,
You come.
You are the cure to my pain.
You send your loving energy,
where the healing is most needed.
You remind me your healing powers surround me
It is just that sometimes I do not hear them
because my ears are filled with cotton.
I do not see them,
Because my blinders are on
You are never far away,
Walking within me,
You hear the smallest of my wimpers.
You always know when I need to nurse
On your milk of love and grace
Like a child, you always know when
I am craving you
My Theme Song
I remember growing up being taught that my name was a legacy. I was told my name was changed to Sharon because my parents wished for me to become progressively happy in my life. My Hebrew name is Sarai Bella, which means beautiful princess. This was the legacy I was given when my family named me. Consciously or unconsciously, this seems to have become a part of my life. Each day I find myself moving to a greater and deeper level of happiness. Perhaps it in this same sense that I am growing into the calling of nobility that was prophesied for me when I was adopted into my family.
I have been thinking a lot about this today because I was recently asked a similar question. What is your theme song? See it is one day for others to prophesize about you with your name, but when I adopt a song as my theme song or am given one by someone else, it has the same effect. As far as I know, nobody has ever given me a theme song, so I decide to select one for myself. The one I decided to make my theme song is “If I were brave,” by Jana Stanfield. I picked this song because it is a reminder that if I believe that I can and that you are with me in this journey, then I can accomplish anything that I feel led to accomplish. This video is filled with the stories of women who embraced their courage and bravery and followed their heart.
Read moreGolden Shadows
Dear Garnishelli,
I know I normally start my personal journal entries with Dear God, but since you were the one who asked me to reflect more on this, I am writing this one to you. God knows this is as much for me as it is for you, and who ever else reads this. See the truth is that the Ultimate Consciousness, really wants us to be our most vibrant and creative selves. We were each given the gift to express something unique and amazing, which will help raise the vibrational frequency in the world in some way. It is just that so few of us, myself included, consistently remember we have these powers. We forget to always embody the bright light within ourselves, our Golden Shadow.
Psychiatrist Carl Jung called our submerged creative potential the "Golden Shadow." Whenever we have intense admiration for others, we are actually seeing our Golden Shadow. The qualities we admire in others are the qualities we have not yet owned and embodied in our own lives. In other words, our Golden Shadow is our submerged greatness. It is our dismissed and unknown strengths. Most often they are hidden and disguised within our deepest emotional pain and hurt. Our Golden Shadow is the part of our souls which offer particular strength of love and healing. It comes from the spaces in our life where we have experienced the most pain and challenges in our lives.
Read moreI don't know
This week has been such a challenge, well actually the last few weeks. Bruce’s passing pierced my heart in a way I cannot even begin to explain. I am so grateful he is no longer suffering, but there are not words to explain the ways he touched my heart. He was one of the first of Zoe’s family that I met and we bonded immediately at Rose’s funeral. Funny, it was he and Joanie who welcomed me into the family from day one. Never a question or a comment. Bruce began calling me cousin Sharon from day one. My heart is filled with memories we created together. From the time he let me hold and comfort him at Rose’s funeral to the day he wept from his heart at a plate of Lemon Drop cookies. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to know this groovy kind of guy. Nobody can say it like he can. Maybe that is why I love Maryanna so much, she always says she is a groovy kind of gal. Too bad they never met.
I think about all the people have made transition this week. Bruce, Michael who came to live with you again at the young age of 17, and Jerry who like Bruce fought a long battle with cancer. I don’t understand this disease. I don’t understand why people die when they do. I don’t understand why there are some deaths which sadden me and others that leave a whole in my heart that I just cannot explain. I just don’t understand and I am not sure I ever will, other than to know that there work here on earth was done.
Read moreWhy?
Dear God,
There are so many things in my life I cannot explain. Some of them are little things such as, where have all the missing socks gone and where is Zoe’s good pair of jeans hiding? Then there is the bigger question like why am I still alive.
Honestly, I have no idea. I have been through so many situations in my life where I could have died and all I know is that I did not. I have no idea why, it just is. I could try to explain that the doctors saved me, but there are others who have been through what I went through and did not survive.
I could have died when I was born, as could my birth mother, but neither of us died, well I know for sure I did not. There were complications, which my foster parents, made sure were addressed, but I did not die.
When I was in an accident in my early 20’s and thrown from the car, I could have died, but I somehow landed relatively unscathed as I flew out of my car and landed in the back of a parked truck. My car was totaled, but other than a few bruises and lots of soreness I was unharmed and I do not know why.
Read moreJust Wondering
I have been sitting here thinking for a moment about what is normal for me? Am I even mindful of the normalness of my life, until like a fish I am removed from my water. For example, it seems completely normal for me to do things when others tell me what to do, as if this is what I expect. If I am to accomplish the goals in my life, someone other than myself is going to give me the directions on how to do x, y, or z. so when I am not told how or what is expected it creates this sense of wondering, which can sometimes feel uncomfortable or scary.
I have been writing academic papers for so long now that when I am asked to write something, I fall back into that normal mode and disconnect from my creativity and go through my own organizational process to create this paper. I follow the process and turn in a well written and well researched paper which follows all the rules I have learned about writing a paper.
Read more