Devotion to Love

To only acknowledge the peace and joy and pleasure of Love is to deny all that it is. To submit to Love is to bleed, to weep, to ache, to long, to mourn, to be furious, and to be consumed. Whether it is Love for another, Love for all of humanity, Love for a particular cause, or Love just Being Love … it will hurt, it will break, it will shatter, it will frustrate.

To know the ecstasy of Love is also to know the devastation of Love. To know the joy of Love is to also know the sorrow of Love. To know the passion of Love is to also know the disappointment of Love. To know the fire of Love is to also know the frustration of Love. To know the patience of Love is to also know the impatience of Love. To know the kindness and compassion of Love is to also know the heartbreak of Love. To know the constancy and permanence of Love is to also know the loneliness of Love. To know the creation of Love is to also know the withdrawal of Love. To know the giving of Love is to also know mankind’s rejection of Love.

To be True to Love is to live every day grateful for Love, grateful for all that it is, and to give thanks for its nature, to praise every part, and to desire it all eagerly, willingly and joyfully.

I say to Love … consume me, use me, engulf me, torment me, teach me, shatter me, comfort me, keep me, uplift me, inspire me, reveal to me … just please don’t ever leave me, for hell’s most agonizing sting comes only when separated from Love. Devotion to Love is devotion to God … it is to exist in harmony with Truth and in Oneness with the Divine and with one another.

Living Truth…My Prayer

May I consciously live as my inner Truth.

May I create heaven by living my Truth, and avoid creating hell by straying from my Truth and pushing away my Divine nature defined as Love.

May I live in acceptance of my dark side, but not give it emphasis, and always see it as a pathway back to the Light.

May I be Compassionate, Kind and Loving in all things, connect with God in infinite Love, and connect with others in shared humanity and Divinity.

May I be tolerant, open minded, accepting and welcoming of others.

May I be reminded of my purpose in Being.

May I be mindful and thankful for blessings received, and return my gratitude back to the Source.

May I bring healing to my circle, and be a source of encouragement to all those I encounter.

May I be a servant of Heaven in all things, giving of my gifts and talents, and be a source of goodness and comfort to others.

May I make a difference today and every day, in words, in actions, and in just Being.

May I be at peace and exist as LOVE.

Happy Thanksgiving

May every day be a day of Thanksgiving. May we always remember to give thanks for the blessings so richly encountered in our lives, and return gratitude to the Source.

What would Love Do?

In all things may we remember to ask, “What would Love do?”

Thoughts of God

Does the opinion others have of you carry more importance than your opinion of yourself?

I know the answer I “want” to give to this question. Can I with all honesty give the answer I “want” to give?

Giving away personal power is something I seem to do with ease and frequency. Maybe to a specific person (or multiple people), maybe it is a societal ideal that defines success, maybe it is a religion that writes rules to obey.

Regardless of what it is, we place a high value on the opinions of entities outside of ourselves. Somewhere along the way, our inner voice identifies with an external voice, and this voice is not necessarily very kind to us. We focus and ruminate on every negative thing that was ever said or done and make it our personal truth. We twist words around, create our own interpretation, and one day find ourselves believing we are unworthy, undeserving, and lack value.

So what does it take to start listening to our inner voice? Perhaps it starts with intuition. We are familiar with the “gut feeling”, the inner voice that serves to protect us, guide us, and keep us out of harm’s way. Intuition lives beyond the confusion and the chatter.

Be aware of the poison given to you by others and mindfully reject it. Practice being with your value just because of who you are separate from a list of accomplishments and societal markers of success. Practice Loving yourself the way God Loves you. Practice seeing yourself as the perfect Creation you are. You are a Thought created by God.

We are a glorious Creation, a result of God’s Thought in Love. God put the spark of the Divine inside of us, the Light of Love created exactly as we were meant to be. Thank God for us. Thank God for the Thought that is us.

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Together

Knowing

It strikes me how often we think we know something, and the certainty with which we believe it to be so. We think we know things based on what we think are facts, and we convince ourselves of their truth. What do we really know? I spent many years of my life studying subjects in college that were supposedly teaching me important things, and presumably giving me the gift of knowledge.

Some of those years involved the study of human behavior, and some of those years were spent studying science. Regardless of whether it was physics, chemistry, or psychology, the attempt to fit facts into neat boxes was consistent across subjects. I think the lesson I learned was that regardless of subject matter, truth is a very subjective thing. Even science cannot speak in absolutes; it still requires belief. While there is a certain amount of objectivity to science and there are methods for studying a subject from a scientific perspective, even science almost never draws conclusions, but rather speaks in the language of probabilities. Conclusions are rarely ever drawn and when they are, often times they are amended or outright retracted. Anyone who follows medical research at all can attest to the fact that while today coffee is okay to drink, tomorrow it will kill you based on “scientific” research.

We can’t even rely on our senses to tell us what is true. For how long was it believed that the earth was flat based on observation? The horizon could be visualized and the sun would go down below a certain line, so it was certainly a reasonable assumption that the ground was flat. Take a more recent example of the reclassification of Pluto away from planet status, and we find that perhaps we haven’t come as far as we convince ourselves we have.

So then what is true? Is there such a thing as truth? Can we ever be sure of anything?

I think the only thing I know is that I don’t know. I guess I’ve discovered Socrates late in life. The more time that goes by, the more I don’t know. I tend to wrap my mind around everything, examine it, elaborate on it, and give a great deal of my energy to figuring things out. I simply don’t know.

I do have a sense of me beyond my search, my mental chatter and elaborations, my emotional weaknesses, and my physical body limits … Love connects me to God, it is the place where I know God as I know myself.

When I look at you, I see you as a reflection of knowing, and I am grateful for you because you are another part of knowing, of Whole. Maybe that’s all I need to really know.

Do You Know?

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia

In the smallest ways, we have an opportunity to make a big impact. I wonder how many times we don’t offer a kindness because we don’t think it is important or don’t think it will make any difference. I wonder how many times we hurry through our day and miss opportunities to give to and serve one another in Love.

Do you know that the person you just passed on your way into the store really needed to have a small connection of a smile and greeting with someone in their day just to turn around a really awful Monday where everything was going wrong? Do you know that the clerk that just checked your groceries out of the store needed someone to ask how his day was going because he just had a fight with his girlfriend, and could have used a compassionate ear? Do you know that the person sitting outside collecting money for a Christmas charity hasn’t had anything to drink all day and would really appreciate a bottle of water? Do you know that the woman you passed in the aisle with the lovely eyes could really use a compliment on them because she just came from chemotherapy? Do you know that the child you see standing by her mother would feel so important if you just smiled at her and asked her name?

Do you know what a difference you make just because you are uniquely you and you bring all of your gifts to the world every single day? Do you know how much the smallest act of kindness from your heart can impact someone else’s life? It can, and it does. You will change someone’s life for the better in holy moments of giving, and we will all rejoice for the Love you give, the joy you create, and the hope you inspire.

A Bouquet for Sunday