Taylor E. Stevens ~ Radical Expression

BARREN LAND

2026-05-04T10:42:00.003-04:00

I am feeling very much like barren land these days.

Desert.

I have spent my entire professional life working in creative fields. Even as a youth, I was involved in music and the arts. I began professional gospel music when I was eleven years of age.

Though my current title is Reverend, I consider myself an artist.

And I am in a barren period artistically. My creativity feels stifled, at best. Flat. Not vital. Which is interesting, because I do not feel the same about my spiritual alignment. I am attuned as much as ever.

I am not used to feeling spiritually and artistically dystonic.

I really don’t feel as if my spiritual and creative living are different. They are, however, varied expressions of the one life force. Spirit within me is the creative impulse. It is in all of us. We are all creative by creation. And those expressions are unique, and they ebb and flow in and from all of us. There are times when I feel more inspired and creative than at other times.

Barren, though, is rare.

As most of you readers know, my husband passed away in November of 2025. His passing was the culmination of nine years of illness for him and caregiving for me. It was progressive, and the last five or so years were very difficult. I am bereft at the loss. I took almost two months’ bereavement leave from my position as a senior minister. I simply could not function. As most of what I do is creative by nature, the hollowness in me stopped me in my tracks. I could not imagine tuning in and tracking with the inspiring movement inside of me. Not in front of a congregation.

When I returned to officiating Sunday services, I did so with no small amount of trepidation. With over thirty years in ministry, I do impeccably trust my intuitive impulses. In most circumstances. After losing a spouse was a different context to work from. The lamp from which I usually shine felt shattered.

The grief and the mourning have been intense. The sorrow, deep and immense. While it seems difficult for those around me, I have allowed fully for it. I lean right in. I sob when I need to sob, which is a lot. I have physical and psychological symptoms. I tire easily. I have cognitive space-outs. I irritate more easily than usual.

I frequently and consistently feel barren. Flat. Dry. Arid.

I continue to do my best at presenting effective and even entertaining Sunday sermons. I am writing infrequently. I amp myself up to occasionally record a social media video. And I pray and maintain my connection, regardless of what I may be feeling.

I am a lifelong creative and not feeling very creative.

Yet here I am.

While I am not sure this will ever be distributed, I am engaging in the art of creativity for the sake of engaging in creativity. I am writing because of my love of writing. I am demonstrating that, regardless of pain and sorrow, grief and mourning, art can be born from them. Not despite them. From them.

This is my desert rose.

Someone gave Donald and me a desert rose plant when we married sixteen years ago. Donald is now gone, yet the desert rose is in full bloom.

Donald is now gone, yet our love is still in full bloom.

I must believe that beauty can still be born from barren land. If the desert can yield blossoms, then so can I.

There are periods when our desert rose has nary a blossom. I have never once heard a critical voice coming from it. It simply knows that it will bloom again when it is time.

The same wisdom is in me. I have not been blooming very much recently. Yet I trust that I will blossom again prolifically when it is time. Maybe I just need some time to be barren now. To not produce too much, to embrace my desert nature. Perhaps the volume of tears is flooding my garden. And perhaps, after this venture, I will drop the term “barren” and know that I will soon be fertile once again. My consistent attuning to the Great Creator can only result in my own great creations

I began this creative experiment with the words, “I am feeling very much like barren land these days.”

And now, not so much.

Barrenness has borne creativity. It’s a small step. A gift of love.

And just like that, I am creating again.

LOVE RISES AFTER LOSS

2026-04-03T18:26:00.002-04:00

I am fifteen years old. My father has been living in a facility due to early-onset dementia. He does not know who I am.

Yet it is his birthday, and so I bake him a cake and take it to him. With his condition, I must feed him the cake.

As he does not know me, he is fixated on each bite of cake. He does not look at me. He looks at the spoon and at the cake.

Only at the spoon and at the next bite of cake. He does not see this fifteen-year-old he doesn’t know. The one who so longs to be seen.

Fast forward fifty years. It is my husband's birthday. Due to Lewy Body dementia, he lives in a facility. I obtain a cake, and I take it to him. As he cannot use his hands or utensils, I feed him the cake. I do not miss out on the memories or the patterns or the pain.

This is different.

He knows me. Even with the advancing dementia, he knows me. He sees me. He relishes each bite of cake and gazes at the one feeding him. He sees me. And I see him loving me.

My dad. My husband. The dementia. The loss. The honor. The connection. The cake. The love. The feeding.

The love. The love. The love.

I remember every detail of not being known and of being profoundly known. Baked into those cakes was a love beyond words. Greater than dementia or memories. Greater than feeding or being fed.

Both of them are gone now, and yet they are both here. They are both great loves of my lifetime. I was blessed to have loved and fed and served them both.

In my own experience, that is my Easter story.

Crucifixion. Resurrection.

Loss. Love.

In my memories and in my heart and in this moment I am risen.

PURPOSEFUL GRIEF

2026-01-29T08:21:00.001-05:00

I have never felt so bereft. And I have never felt more purposeful.

I do not recall the last time I sat down to compose a blog post. It would be easy enough to check. I just do not feel compelled to do so.

For those new to me and to my work, I am bereft because my beloved husband, Donald, passed away on November 8, 2025. At 10:49 p.m. I was holding his hand as he released his final exhalation. While he had been progressively ill for nine years, his death came as a shock. It was a shock that I am still grappling to internalize. To believe. To realize.

Donald died from complications of Lewy body dementia. In the last few years of his life, I provided almost total care. In early April of last year, I physically could no longer care for him. I made the excruciating decision to move him to a skilled nursing facility. From April until November, I lived alone in the home that had been ours. I trekked to his facility and watched as he continued his decline. His care was excellent. I went and I micro-managed that care. I was his loving husband and his fierce advocate. I personally participated in his care, and when I traveled, I spoke with him and to his providers with frequency.

And now he is gone. I have never felt so bereft.

I also am experiencing a deeper level of purpose than I have ever felt.

After two months of bereavement leave, I returned to my full-time position as a senior minister. I could not fathom how I was going to make it through the first Sunday service. And yet I did. And the second and the third. When the impulse to write began to move within me, I decided to give way to that impulse. As I type these words, I am uncertain as to whether this will ever be distributed.

And yet I continue to type. I listen to the movement in my heart and allow the movement to become words. I am imbuing every word with feeling. Feeling that is seeking expression. Grief. Sadness. Love. Loss. Purpose.

Purpose.

There were thirty years to the month between the deaths of my two spouses. I am a man who has been supremely blessed to have had not one but two incredible loves. Amazing love. Transformative love.

And agonizing loss.

I am a person who deeply believes that everything that happens has purpose and has meaning. I also deeply believe that it is fundamental to our evolution to discover and to embrace the purpose in what happens and to assign a meaning that serves our Soul and all who are involved.

Our pain uses us until we decide to use our pain.

And so, I am feeling the enormous pain in my heart, and I am also feeling the enormity of the equivalent love. I am intoning that love into words. I am processing the pain into pictures that I seek to share with you. I want you to read my words and feel my heart. I want you to taste the saltiness of my tears. I want you to hear the cessation of his final breath, and how it became a guttural howl that instinctively sounded through me.

I shared not quite seventeen years with the most delectably quirky, wise, loving, delightful man that I have ever known. No one has ever loved me like Donald loved me. No one will ever love me as Donald loved me. I am inexplicably changed due to that level of love.

And so, the impact of that love and of that loss is now an urgency to fulfill the purpose that is clear and passionate inside of me. The purpose is not new. The intensity has increased. Having once again faced death in an up-close and personal way, I am stunningly aware of my own mortality. I have lived far more years than I will accumulate in the future.

My time is now.

My heart is bruised. The grief is still new, and as the shock subsides, the waves are of tidal proportion.

And yet I am crystal clear that there is purpose in my grief. My non-negotiable commitment to emotional fluency and spiritual dedication makes my grief available to be used in service of a world ill-versed in feeling its pain.

Donald is no longer embodied. And yet my communion with his spirit is clear and comprehensive. As such, he will be a part of my creative expression for the remainder of my days. He will be in every sermon. Every class. Every podcast. Every blog.

Every blog.

I embrace that I will grieve Donald until I rejoin Donald with my final exhale. In the meantime, I will channel my grief into purposeful expression. Passionate expression. Full and free connection. I will hold you in your grief because I do not fear it.

For those who are the survivors of great love, there is great grief. It is the price we pay for being incredibly blessed. The love will always remain, and so shall the grief.

I do not lament that fact. I do not attempt to deny, suppress, or outrun the pain. Instead, I use it. I allow the grief to flow freely through my tears, my words, my counsel, my expression.

For you see, I have never felt so bereft. Or more purposeful.

Or more purposeful.

WHAT IS LEFT?

2024-06-29T16:42:00.005-04:00

Each of us will physically leave this realm, and yet something very real will be left behind.

Whether we are intentional or not, we each leave behind us a legacy. That legacy is comprised of the energy that we have emitted while here interacting on earth. The energy is formed into thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. As energy can neither be created or destroyed, we are conduits of an Infinite energy that is constantly being molded and exchanged within the Field in which we dwell.

Energy comes into us, is informed either consciously or unconsciously, and goes forth from us. We are holographic beings, and so technically the energy doesn’t come or go anywhere. We seem to be separate distinct beings in this realm, yet we forever remain atone. We are granted access to the Infinite energy to have a free experience of it. We choose what to do with this energy. We ether enhance or detract from the Universal Field based on what we do with the energy given.

Enough of the foundational theory.

Let’s get personal.

My friend Pat was killed in a car accident last week up in Georgia where she had a second home. I am still in the process of coming to terms with her sudden passing. While I termed her my friend that may not be the best moniker for her. We were not friends in a traditional, though we were extremely friendly. We did not socialize or engage in chit chat. I was never in her home not she in mine.

We were spiritual comrades. Spirit-companions.

That does not minimize the sadness I feel relative to her sudden passing. I grieve and I miss her already. I know my life experience was enhanced by her place in it. I sense a dimming now that she has left.

And yet…

The reason that I began this tribute with a mini lesson in quantum physics Is while Pat is no longer with me and us in a physical way the energy that she left behind is vital, tangible, and unmistakable. I can feel her as I type these words. As I fumble to capture her energy in form I am uplifted and amped up by my direct experience of the wondrous woman she was and somehow is.

When I think of Pat I immediately think of prayer.

Pat loved to pray. Loved to pray! She loved praying and sharing prayers so much that she did not just pray, she was a prayer. A living prayer. A lilting prayer. A dynamic prayer. A somehow musical prayer. It had a feel like no one I have ever known. It was impactful in a most beautiful way.

As I reflect on a world without Pat in it I also know with certainty that every impactful, beautiful, living, lilting, musical, vital prayer that Pat ever offered is still here as an imprint upon the Field. Her praying transformed energy that is here with us, though she no longer is. In fact, what was most essential of Pat still remains. Still lives. Still vibrates. Still prays on in this realm. Her body is gone, and her spirit prays on.

The world is better because Pat prayed.

Pat was also very funny. Very kind, compassionate. Pat was passionate and relentless in her emotional and spiritual inner work. She owned her “stuff” like few people I have known. She took responsibility.

Pat was also intensely human. She could drop an f-bomb with the best of them. She spoke honestly of what was real for her. She called out the inconsistencies of others, while also being accountable to her own. She occasionally danced about. She quipped and joked and uplifted a room. She was awesome and ornery. Jokeful and joyous. She was real. She was very, very real.

And mostly what I will remember about Pat is how she prayed.

Pat served in many capacities in our Unity congregation. She served and she gave generously and lavishly. She showed up. Repeatedly. Consistently. She applied the Principles and acted upon Truth.

She did it all with a prayer.

And now Pat has left this realm, and she indeed has left something very real behind.

Pat has left an ocean of transformed energy that benefits all living beings. She has left traces, a trail of prayer energy that remains though her physicality no longer is. Prayer for me is Pat’s greatest legacy. Her living, vibrational memorial. I am better because Pat prayed. And so is the world.

And so, I honor Pat by typing these words, imbuing them with as much Pat energy as possible. I double down on my own commitment to being a living, vital prayer. I pray Pat forward. I will celebrate her by streaming prayer energy every time I think of her. While I could never lilt in the same way, I can vibe at my frequency to make my own unique contribution. Pat and I were indeed spiritual comrades who deeply knew the unparalleled power of prayer. It united us. It magnified us. It will always live as us.

Prayer is what is left now that Pat has gone.

That vital truth invites me again into my own personal inquiry as to what will remain when I am gone? And what, dear reader, will remain when you yourself have left this realm?

Thank you, Pat, for making me and this world better because you lived.

And because you prayed.

THE HEART KNOWS

2024-06-12T13:02:00.000-04:00

“The longest journey we will ever make is from the head to the heart.”

I am certain that most of my readers will have heard some version of that declaration before.

I am equally certain that hearing it and applying it are two very different things.

I have indeed found it to be a long journey. It has and continues to be for me personally. And in my thirty years of ministry and counseling I have witnessed it to be an arduous dynamic for most people.

The head to heart journey begins with some sort of notion that it is a desirable and even necessary sojourn to be taken. At some point we hear a version of the opening quote to this blog post. Something internally clicks. The innate wisdom of the heart stirs at the potential reenactment of its power. Heart intelligence is primal. The heart beats before the brain is formed. This intelligence is always seeking to be directly known. Directly experienced. Directly applied. It is a call that can be delayed yet never fully suppressed.

Because of mind-identification the whispers of the heart are rarely noticed. This is the overriding dynamic of the current critical mass. The incredible prevalence of people staring at device screens mirrors perfectly how most humans are staring at the content streaming on the screen of the mind. These two factors combined obscure the wisdom of the heart. The language of the mind is commentary while the language of the heart of feeling. Herein lies the foundation of the predicament.

We are at a place in consciousness development where feeling is combatted and suppressed. The truth of the heart is that it is the portal of All Presence, Power, and Intelligence. All that Divine data is at the center of the heart temple. It is energetically encased in emotional wounding that is also a part of the heart atmosphere. To have a sustained experience of heart intelligence and Divine data we must move through the layers or veils of this wounding.

And this is central to why the journey from the head to the heart is indeed the longest. The most challenging. The most arduous. The most difficult. And the rarest.

Another common yet seldom applied slogan is that “we must feel to heal.”

I know it to be so.

Mental commentary is not primal. It is not original. In human development it occurs some years after our emotional wounding. Fundamentally the habitual narrative that loops through our mind streams up from an underlying emotional signature. While it is true that thought prompts feelings, in its original orientation feeling comes first. We are emotional beings before we are cognitive. The emotional signature is layered over the Vibrational which is our inherent vital Self.

We are called to reverse the order of our development. That could be called the journey of the head to the heart. We shift our relationship to mind-content, moving from identification to witness. We literally drop our attention down into the heart. We allow ourselves to feel the veils of raw emotions that shroud the essential heart. We disengage from the story we have attached to the feeling.

Hence, we feel to heal.

Hence, we move from the head identification to a centering within the heart.

This is clearly not for the timid.

It requires courage. It requires commitment. It requires humility and bravery. It requires a deep trust. Living from the heart and its primal knowing requires much. Yet is also gifts us with clarity, resilience, fortitude, deep connection, and compassion. It gifts us with wisdom, which is synonymous with heart knowing.

My own long journey from my mind to my heart is fundamental to my life-journey and central to my purpose. As I have dedicated myself to my own heart journey for decades, I feel qualified to join others on theirs. I am not afraid of the pain I have found in my own heart, and I am not fearful to experience the pain that is within yours. This is assisted by my intimate knowing of what is Vibrationally available just below the veils.

I believe that this journey is the journey back to the “God” we never left. Experientially we have been cut off because we have become deadened at the feeling level. We are a pain-averse culture. We prefer mind-spin to felt experience. We can somewhat control the mind. We cannot control mystical emergence. It is what we both long for and fear most.

And it is inevitable.

Heart-knowing mystical realization is inevitable because It is what we are. It may take lifetimes. It may come in a quantum moment of Grace. But it will happen. And it will come as direct felt experience from the heart, and not as thought stream from the head.

Whether you believe me or not I assure you that you already know everything that is knowable. You know it because it is the Essence of your being. Of All being. It is deep within your heart, awaiting your sustained attention. It requires feeling. Feeling without storytelling. Sustained unflinching feeling. It is for me the longest yet also the best journey I have ever made.

And you can make it too.

The heart knows.

The heart already knows.

Go there. Right now. Listen. Feel. Open to it. Allow the movement.

I am right here with you.

BEST FOR LAST

2024-05-15T12:56:00.000-04:00

What will I be saying when I depart this life?

Not in a literal sense.

Stay with me.

After over seventeen years as a working minister my beloved Richard gave his final sermon in early September of 1995. It was to a small group of devotees gathered in our living room. Calling it a sermon may be a bit of an overstatement. It was a sharing. His health was declining, though we did not think at the time that his passing was imminent.

Though we did not know it would be his final lecture it did have a very definite energy to it. If not ominous it did feel somehow monumental. Circumstantial. Consequential.

Richard spoke about what are called the “fruits of the spirit.” The particulars of what comprises those are not so relevant. What was and is striking to me about his subject matter that day is that the aspects that are termed “fruits of the spirit” were central to the way Richard lived and served. He lived seeking to become more fruitful in his living and in his expressing. He wanted to align with and embody spiritual attributes in his human experience. He continually stressed this form of “ripening” in what he taught and in how he served.

I realized after his passing that while not a conscious choice he sermonized on what was most central to his heart in his final sharing.

He saved the best for last.

It was what Richard’s Soul was saying when he departed this life. What he was cosmically communicating. The energy his Soul was emitting. Being fruitful was a Soul mission and so he left behind a trail of spirit Essence in not only word but also form.

The best for sure. And it came at the last.

I do not currently have a prognosis that would lead to think that I am at the final days or months of my lifetime. I am not really that old, at least in terms of current life span statistics.

Yet I know for sure that I have way less time left than I have already lived. I know I am nearing the end of my active vocation in its current form. I ponder and contemplate purpose and legacy while giving little thought to goals or accomplishments.

If I were saving the best for last what will that be?

If I knew I was going to give my final sermon, what would I preach about?

If I were to laser focus my energy this day, knowing it would be my lasting emission, what would I choose to emit?

If this was the last blog I would ever compose, would I choose this topic and these questions?

What has been central to my living expression and to my personal ministry?

I pose these questions to you, dear readers, rather than supply my answers.

While you may not compose sermons or blogs, I assure you that your life is a ministry of sorts. You are always emitting energy. You are always leaving a trail. Traces in your path. That trail and those traces are indeed your legacy. They are what you will leave behind.

Richard left behind the fruits of the spirit. He continues to do so via my remembrance of him and his lasting best.

I am clearer by the day about what I consider to be my lasting legacy.

I am under no illusion that I have endless time left.

I get up every morning with a prayer in my heart that I will be of useful service while I am still here, embodied. I seek to become the best that I can be. I arise willing to forgive and open to evolve and thus uplift this world.

In living thusly, I know that if this is my last day on earth it will be my personal version of the best for last.

PRELUDE TO ANOTHER DIGIT

2024-04-17T11:31:00.002-04:00

“I am older than I ever intended to be.”

That is a line from the wonderful play and subsequent movie A Lion In Winter. I first heard it in college, which I freely admit was a long, long time ago. I thought at the time that I had an accurate perspective on what it meant.

I did not.

As an aspiring performing artist, I believed at the time that getting “old” was the worst thing that could ever happen. I of course did not stop and consider the alternative. I also ignored the inevitability that if I lived long enough I too would one day be “older than I ever intended to be.”

One of the biggest surprises of my lifetime is how much I like being a man of an age. I will soon be sixty-seven, and the disbelief I sometimes feel around that is not accompanied by any unpleasantness or dread. I feel a greater freedom than I have ever felt. My priorities and sense of purpose are crystal clear. There is a certainty about why I am here, and what I am about. I dwell consistently in a spiritual reality that fuels my living and feeds my serving. I awaken each day with a granular gratitude that I have another day to awaken and contribute more.

There is way more sand in the bottom of my hourglass than there is in the top. Much more of my life experience is now downstream than what is flowing toward me. That does not trouble me at all. It gifts me with an urgency about how I choose to spend my remaining days. It clarifies the importance of applying my values and navigating via my priorities. Purpose is my compass, and my life experiences my map of awakening. I rarely lose a sense that regardless of what circumstances are occurring there is always something greater than the manifest realm with all its challenges and dramas.

My body and physical capabilities are not what they once were. I admit to having more cognitive pauses than in previous years. I see very little detail without the aid of my glasses. What used to be up there is now down here. What used to be tight and smooth is now saggy and crepey. And I humbly embrace that I also experience more clarity, maturity, and wisdom than I ever have. I let things slide off me easily. I have clear boundaries which also grant me a deeper sense of connection. My belonging is free of attempts to fit in, which is liberating beyond measure.

I appreciate deeply that against all odds I am older than I ever intended to be.

In a mostly youth obsessed culture I relish that I have lived long enough to proudly wear the moniker senior citizen. I do not hesitate to flash my Medicare card. I hold no shame around the disability placard that hangs from my rearview mirror. The feet that used to so frequently wear Capezio dance shoes and the latest fashion almost exclusively don Sketchers and Crocs. I have lived long enough to choose comfort over trend, and it tickles me more than I can say.

As I am poised to add another digit to the length of my incarnation I do so mindful that aging is no longer the adversary it once was. I am clear that I have no more mountains to climb. The fact that it is no longer physically possible for me to even climb stairs is secondary. Goals and aspirations have faded as my present moment experience is what matters most. How I am relating to life as it is, is what matters most. While I once wanted to change the world, I now want to simply love it as it is.

To those who say age is merely a state of mind I choose not to disagree. I know what it is to me. I do not identify with it, but neither do I deny it. I have been young. I have been middle age. I already experienced those places in the human experience. I do not need to pretend that I can somehow magically have that again. From this perspective I realize I did not fully inhabit those timeframes. I took them for granted.

And now I am committed to being a vital, awake, contributing senior who is content to be older than I ever intended to be.

TO to FOR

2024-01-31T17:10:00.004-05:00

It has finally landed.

Life is for me.

Nothing in at least my world prepared me to know that, let alone live from it.

I was taught that life happened to me. The best I could do was to fend off what was coming at me. Life was largely something to defend against. It was dangerous. People were dangerous. That was the programming. It was not exclusive. But it was there for sure. It saturated my experience from an early age.

I also watched almost continuous attempts at control. I mean, defense is one form of control. Constant scrutiny for danger is a form of control. High level reptilian living is misguided control. Natural, but in many ways not helpful. Of course, these are all attempts at what can never be controlled. Life is happening to us, and we reach for the tribal tools we were provided with to try and deal with it.

Even as a child I suspected there was something very off with this “to” approach. It did not sit well in my gut or in my heart. I always felt something stirring and moving in and as a more expansive inner reality. My intuition was at odds with my familial and cultural programming. Yet I also knew I was on to something.

Religion in many ways only supported the notion that life and God happened to me. Praying to have things be different rarely resulted in changed effects or circumstances. God happened to the Biblical characters of old and God was happening to me, my family, my world. Trying to appease a God that was happening “to” me resulted not in increased faith but in increased anxiety.

The shifting in my perceptions and experiences was slow but also steady and sure. My suspicions gained traction and I gathered more and more evidence that life was not only happening to me. At first, I began to feel the way that life was not only happening TO but also THROUGH me. This was subtle at first, but by focusing energy into it, it began to gain momentum. Velocity. It came in tangible waves.

I began to surf the growing waves of intuition and my sense of cooperation increased. I began to live in a felt awareness of a Life bigger than “me” or “mine.” There is really no such thing as “my life.” There is Life, and there is my experience of it. This for me was quantum. It opened an entire new world of experience.

This for me was quantum.

And there it was. A quantum shift in my consciousness and in my experience.

This FOR me.

Life was not happening TO me. Life was happening FOR me. I only needed to choose to see it that way. I needed to go beyond standard reasoning and look FOR the hidden good in all things. It was always there. It had to be. FOR life was already FOR me. Even when I was not.

My constant defense against what was happening to me prevented me from perceiving the ever-present movement of Good that was always for me.

My constant attempts at control prevented me from cooperating with the Essential movement of Life in all Its grand orchestrations. In trying to fend off what I feared might happen to me I was also blocking what was seeking to happen for me.

And so it has finally landed.

Life is for me.

I know that to be true.

I trust it to be accurate and active.

And so, this is the perfect year to dedicate to knowing even more fully for myself and sharing widely with all who choose to listen that:

Life is FOR you! I invite you to join me in an embodied and actualized movement from Life happening TO you to Life happening FOR you.

2024. TO to FOR.

Let it be more than a concept. Allow it to be the Reality that it is.

Life is FOR you.

Let it be so.

CUTTING LOSSES

2023-11-08T13:06:00.000-05:00

“Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.”

I used to hate that quote.

It is actually a lyric from a song made popular by the late Janis Joplin. The sentiment activated all sorts of internal arguments for me until I grew into knowing how true it really is. I guess earlier in life I had not yet endured enough loss to understand what composer Kris Kristofferson was saying.

Now I have and so I do.

I began to experience deep losses early in my lifetime. From my current perspective I see them as evidence of an archetypal pattern that while extremely painful were also profoundly revelatory. When I became mature enough to consciously use the losses as fodder for growth and evolution the losses no longer used me.

My earlier belief was that every loss was about me. Someone died, leaving me. Someone put me out of their direct sphere, rejecting me. Opportunities were lost, robbing me of success and fulfillment.

Me. Me. Me.

The obvious common denominator in all my life losses was me.

Then one day I awakened to the deeper reality that while it was me that was experiencing the many incidents of loss the common denominator was loss itself and not me.

Holy Janis Joplin.

While this may not land for most readers, I pray that it will take root in at least one of you.

Loss happens. It happens for all of us. Life contains dynamics of both loss and gain. At the broadest level it is not personal. People do not die leaving me. People reject for all sorts of perceptual reasons. Ultimately it has little to nothing to do with me. Opportunities come and go, as do successes and modes of fulfillment. I may be a participant for sure. But opportunities, successes, fulfillment are bigger than me.

The recognition of the above is a perhaps narrow yet open door to freedom.

Freedom from the tyranny of me.

My life experience has been punctuated by a myriad of losses. Those losses were and some remain very painful. While I continued to take them personally, they led to great persistent suffering. Life was somehow tormenting me. Losses were being hurled at me. Love was being torn from me. You and countless others were leaving me.

Me. Me. Me.

I do not minimize the depth of pain that loss has held for me. I simply have learned to hold it differently, more consciously. I have learned to understand that all of us have, are, and will experience multiple losses during the duration of our lifetime. Though they are experienced by our personhood they are not personal. Life takes nothing from me. Regardless of what others may do I am always at choice as to how I interpret their actions. I am always at choice as to whether I take things personally or from a more wakeful, impersonal perspective.

Hence, my friends: freedom.

I have reached a point in this human adventure where I know that there is nothing left that I can lose that I cannot choose a conscious, impersonal relationship to.

Yes, there will be pain.

Yes, I will experience it at a personal level, even as I allow the impersonal to govern my responsiveness. And responsiveness is always rooted in freedom. Key to that freedom is not making losses about me.

“Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.”

I used to hate that quote.

Now I love it.

I love it because I know a felt experience of it.

The past decade has been particularly filled with losses. Deaths of many kinds. People leaving in droves, for many reasons known and unknown. As the spouse of someone leaving incrementally on a daily basis, I am up close and personal with loss.

I am up close and personal with loss, yet I am not mired in taking it personally. That realization is how I cut my losses. How I stop the hemorrhaging of me interpretations. How I silence the wailing of why this is happening to me.

It isn’t.

All this loss is not about me.

It is happening within me, yet not to me. Not personally. I am not being tormented by a punitive life, even when I am left by punitive people.

Freedom. Nothing left to lose. Cutting my losses. Choosing my relating.

Loss will continue to visit my experience, and my freedom is the fortitude that loss itself has taught me to utilize in my relating.

And the one thing I can never lose is my sense of self that rises above the fragile me.

COLORING MY WORLD

2023-06-17T15:18:00.000-04:00

“COLOR MY WORLD WITH LOVE…”

I smile now as I recall the near despair of being asked once again to sing that song at a wedding.

I spent several years of my youth as a freelance wedding singer. I do not know how many nuptials I supplied the soundtrack for, but it was a lot. Some of the people I knew. Many I did not. I mostly enjoyed the experience, and it helped me build a college fund that as a son of a sole-supporting mother I needed.

This was during the early 1970’s until about the mid-1980’s. Songs came in and out of wedding vogue, but a couple endured that entire period. One was “The Wedding Song.” This was for me one of the most monotonous songs ever written. No matter how much I tried to sing some life into it, it always felt flat. I surmised in my teen years that if marriage was anything like this song, I wanted no part in it.

The second most requested song of this time was “Color My World.” It was recorded and became a huge hit for the band Chicago. I truly did love and enjoy performing this song. At least for the first fifty or sixty times. In the later years when someone would call and request my services for their wedding, I would hold my breath when I asked what song or songs they wanted me to sing. I eventually ceased lending my voice to these sacred events because I just could not sing The Wedding Song or Color My World one more time.

Not one more time.

I share this somewhat silly recollection because I recently heard Color My World in a waiting room of a medical establishment. I had not heard it in quite literally decades. I felt a mix of remembered dread yet also sweet nostalgia. As I was in a somewhat anticipatory state awaiting a medical diagnostic procedure part of the lyric touched me in ways that I had not experienced them before.

As I waited and as I listened to the lyric, I felt an expanded awareness around how I am always coloring my experience of my own internal world. It may seem as if the external world of circumstance is what is creating our moment-to-moment experience. We are so often caught in the illusion of out-to-in relating. We confuse cause and effect, and we suffer from this illusion.

The truth is that it is our interpretation and narrative about our circumstances that is always coloring our world. It is awareness of this fact that is our key awakening regarding how we get what we get. It is quite simple. It is a matter of staying vitally aware and interested in the dynamics of our embodied aliveness. We are each energy fields and that energy is always moved by the narrative and meaning that we are applying. In consciousness, commentary is everything.

It is because we say it is.

Literally.

Our commentary is largely what is coloring our world.

As a former wedding singer, I know that marriages come and go. Marriages begin and end. A marriage is radically different from a wedding. No matter how beautifully I may have sung the songs it did not ensure the quality or the duration of the marriage.

There is one marriage, however, that can never be put asunder. And that is the union of will and word. Commentary and color. Narrative and effect. Story and suffering.

Life is a cosmic orchestration, and we are always composing our score. This does not suggest that we can control circumstances. Far from it. It does mean that we may choose how we name, frame, and claim our experiences. We can color inside or outside the perceived lines. We can use primary or pastels. We can paint boldly or softly. Each day is a masterwork that is open to our own interpretation.

I will never sing at another wedding. There will not be another variation of The Wedding Song or Color My World coming from these lips. No.

Yet I have never been clearer that I am always coloring my world. My experiences are up to me. It is my commentary that creates my context. If I want my world to change it is up to me to change my wording. To alter my narrative. To own the art of conscious story telling.

And to take that lyric one step further I am choosing to color my world with love. To tell love stories and to emit love energy. To love my often-feeble, fragile little storyteller. To love my past and to love what is seeking to be as me. To love being love in this often-loveless world.

We can never divorce the power to co-create our own experiences. It is intrinsic in our Sourced nature. Not only can you color your own world, in fact you must. You are and you always have been. Life is a palette, and you are the artist. Color consciously. Color intentionally. Color passionately, vibrantly. Color with courage and boldness. It is your world. Your commentary. Your part is to color.

And for the sake of all, color your world with love.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

2023-06-06T16:10:00.002-04:00

The truth of the matter is, that well worn section of traditional wedding vows was not a part of ours.

And while it was not vowed it has certainly been true.

On June 7th, 2010, I did something I never dreamed I would be legally allowed to do.

I got married.

Now, at the time I had to go to Massachusetts to do so, but I legally married a man as unlikely a choice as was the likelihood of being able to do so. We legally wed in the pergola at the center of the small town that my husband grew up in. His elderly father and several members of his family looked on as a justice of the peace officiated our simple ceremony. We had added a space to speak our own vows to each other, but the officiant forgot so we were hitched without those. The next month we had a larger though not legal spiritual ceremony in our home state of Florida. We were able to speak our vows to each other at that observance. It remains the most memorable part of our service for me. It was not legally binding. But it was beautiful and meaningful and witnessed by many of our closest friends.

And we did not vow “for better or for worse.”

As I type this missive the day prior to our thirteenth anniversary I reflect upon the years and experiences we have faced together. There have been wonderful times for sure. There have been several profound changes and challenges. There have been better times, and there have been times that seemed to be for worse. Losses. Life threatening illnesses. Career changes and endings and new beginnings. The best of both of us has been called forth. And truth be told, so has the worst. As strained as we have felt at times there has never been a moment that we questioned the continuation of our union.

While we did not speak the other oft repeated vow “till death do us part” has never been in question.

Donald has been for me a clear and vital part of my spiritual unfolding. I knew from the beginning that it was a sacred appointment. I guess all our connections are. Yet there are some that are clearly part of our Souls emergence. A coming together for the purpose of pattern resolution and alchemical growth. There are people we meet that we deeply know will lead us to an advancement of our earth curriculum.

Donald has and continues to be that for me.

And now, as many of my readers know, we face together the neurological disorder that is happening in Donald’s brain and most certainly in my heart. As the condition worsens, I am called to become better at how I manage our lives, and everything related to being a fulltime caregiver. While I had no inkling in that Massachusetts pergola that this would be our future here it is. That was our wedding, and this is our marriage.

I did not consciously choose this. Yet now I find myself choosing how to deal with it on a daily and even momently basis. I choose to become better at how I respond and how I relate. I choose to forgive myself when I am thrown into reaction, and skillful relating seems unavailable. I choose to stay true to the wholeness of me, that I may be true to the wholeness of my husband.

And he is still my husband. I love him as he was. And I love him as he is.

There are ways in which he is not the man that I married. Yet I also know that the same is true for him. I am not the same. Illness, loss, and circumstance have changed me. Not that I am worse. I do not frame the changes in that way. Nor do I frame the changes in Donald as a worsening of who he is. The same kind, gentle, sensitive man is here with me. His physicality is greatly affected for sure. There is cognitive decline. But there is also that smile. The occasionally witty retort. The adoring gazes. Even the rascal-like innuendos. All beautiful constancies of the man to whom I said I do. And to who I will always say I do.

Candidly I have some ugly moments these days. And some kind and skillful ones as well. I am better and stronger spiritually than ever before. Though it seems illogical somehow worsening times have always made me better. More compassionate. Merciful. Spacious. Fortuitous. These thirteen years have made me a better man. Even though in ways I am facing the worst of times.

So, we did not say “for better or for worse” on that wedding day thirteen years ago.

Nor did we say, “till death do us part.”

And yet both are true in vital, practical ways. My marriage is a high spiritual practice. It is a workshop in loving more and judging less. It is a PhD in how to be better in the worst of times. It is a gymnasium in self-care so that I may better care for him.

For better or for worse, Donald. Until death do we part.

Happy Anniversary, my love. I am more because we are.

I do. And I always will.

INTIMATE PERCEPTION

2023-03-08T17:24:00.001-05:00

“That’s just your perception.”

Dismissal landing.

Ouch.

Well, yeah.

Connection interrupted.

I had shared something from a deeper part of me when the above retort was delivered in reaction. I use the word reaction purposefully as it did not feel like a response. It felt as if the person with whom I was sharing could not or chose not to find an internal place that would open to fully receive what I was sharing.

Perhaps they could not access a file into which they could place my communication. Perhaps it was too tender a piece of my heart to deal with in that moment. Perhaps it was too dissonant with their own perceptual network. Whatever the reason it was dismissed with the wave of a psycho-spiritual truism.

“That’s just your perception.”

It dismissed what I had shared. It distanced communicator and receiver. And it discounted me and my current experience. The connection was severed, at least in that moment.

Now let me be clear that it indeed is always my perception that I am dealing with and seeing through. Everything is received and processed from the level of perception. The dynamic relationship between perception and projection is a vital part of awakening consciousness. Awakening does not involve ridding us of perception. Awakening involves knowing what our perceptual system is, and how we are applying it in any given moment. That is what frees us from projecting out our disowned perceptions, which is a sure way to block healing and strain relations.

As we honestly share our perceptions in a safe and compassionate space, we begin to create more and more space between perception and the witness of perceptions. We give voice to them as a way of confessing what we are experiencing. How they are received and listened to is crucial to the healing process. Dismissing, discounting, distancing never has a healing affect. Neither do psycho-spiritual truisms. Listening from a space that recognizes and embraces perception as an evolutionary dynamic engages both communicator and listener in a holy space of union and transformation.

I write this not to judge, criticize, or condemn the deliverer of the admonition.

I write this in gratitude that my awareness and dedication to full and present attention and listening has been made deeper as a result of the interaction. I am more committed than ever to knowing that everything that anyone shares with me is indeed that person’s perception. My commitment is to listen in such a way that let’s people know that their perceptions matter to me. Regardless of what I think about what they are sharing, that they are sharing is what is most important. I dedicate myself to staying acutely aware that I am listening to their perceptions through my own perceptual lens. There is always bias. Being aware of that creates freedom in my heart and spaciousness in my mind. That freedom and spaciousness is what I offer as I listen and stay present.

Connection matters more to me than perception.

Yet we cannot remove perception from connection. It is all a part of our ever-evolving expansion of learning to grow in acceptance, honor, dignity, compassion, and love. Your perceptions have a place in my heart because you have a place in my heart. They may indeed be “just your perceptions” but they are a vital part of you. And I don’t want you to be anything other than “just you.” Perceptions and all.

I have come to recognize and embrace that my subject matter and writings have a somewhat limited appeal. That is, of course, just my perception. It is supported, however, by empirical evidence. So, whether you think this applies to you or not I invite you to listen carefully and dig deeply. Look for ways you may not receive people at their own perceptual level. Look for how you might apply dismissive labels. Look squarely at reactions that may create a disconnect, if only for a moment.

We are here in the realm of story. Of perception. We all project onto others at times. It is how we live and grow. And it is a high and holy opportunity to support each other in that growth. You don’t do that by dismissing another’s experience. No matter how misguided you think it is. Afterall, that is just your perception.

Perception and intimacy are not mutually exclusive. They go hand in hand. Heart to heart. I will intimately listen to your perceptions because you matter to me. All of you matters to me.

And because you matter, I write and share my experience. I understand it is just my experience. I understand that you may or may not even read it. If you do, you will read through your own perceptual lens. Through your own bias. And that matters to me too.

But then, it’s just my perception.

PRIMARY PURPOSE

2023-02-11T17:32:00.001-05:00

“I don’t have a purpose anymore.”

The aftermath of open-heart surgery was not nearly as impactful as how that statement landed in my chest.

I took a deep breath. I looked into those eyes and saw the sincerity and I saw the sadness.

This man that I love so deeply. This man that has graced this planet for more than seventy-five years. This man who has helped so many people in so many ways. This man who has done so much. This man who has given so much.

And now this man cannot do what he used to do. He cannot do the simplest of tasks. He cannot reach out to help or give to others. And so by contrast he feels he has no purpose.

I perceptually understand where he was coming from. I also understand he was coming from a faulty premise.

He had thanked me for doing something, and I authentically responded that doing for him is part of my purpose. I meant that. I feel that. I celebrate that, even when it feels difficult or overwhelming. What I do not feel is that my ability to do for him is my only purpose. What I do not feel is that his inability to do for me lessens in any way his purpose. Our expression of purposes has shifted. Yet it does not get to what our primary purposes are.

“I don’t have a purpose anymore.”

I did not correct or seek to change his statement. I held his gaze as I deepened down into my own internal pain-filled response. I waited until authentic words filled my heart and made their way quietly through my tender voice.

“Sweetheart, your adorable, sweet, loving self is your purpose. Your purpose is to spread the beauty that is you to others. You bring joy to so many by simply being who you are. That is your purpose.”

He seemed to take it in and let it land. At least to some degree. Knowing him he will grapple with the notion that what he is, is his gift to the world. It is often said that we are the last ones to know. I believe that is true for my beloved. I guess that if he walked around trying to be adorable, he would only be annoying. It is the natural sweetness that emanates from him that makes him so infinitely appealing.

The exchange reminded me that the primary purpose for any of us is not found in what we do. Our purpose is not diminished when we do less, any more than it is augmented by doing more.

Our primary purpose is to love.

Our primary purpose is to let every single moment of our lives be an opportunity to be, to give, to share the love that we inherently are. We know that this is true because we never feel more resonant than when we are streaming love. Holding a space of love. Listening and speaking with love.

I have had a relatively busy day. That fact does not make me feel more purposeful.

I have consciously infused much of what I have done today with love. And that is what makes what I have done today feel very purposeful indeed.

And so, my darling, I understand that being able to do radically less than you used to do is making you feel less purposeful. I hear you. I feel your heart. I honor what you are experiencing.

And I beg you to reconsider.

Your sweet, loving, adorable presence makes you purposeful in ways transcendent of anything you could or cannot do. You bring joy with that incomparable, radiant smile. You tenderly touch and open hearts by simply being that wondrous, one of a kind you.

And you, dear reader. Yes, you.

Let this missive serve as a reminder that what you do does not make your life purposeful. It does not make you more or less valuable. You do not need to earn your worth.

Your purpose is simply to be the love you are. The love you intrinsically are. The love you already are. Know that, and then do what you do from that knowing.

To live a life of love is to live a life of purpose.

The love you already are is non-negotiable. It is your birthright. It is your purpose for being here. And it never fades.

No matter how little you do.

DREAMS THAT AWAKEN

2023-02-04T14:51:00.002-05:00

“What did you dream of being earlier in your life?”

There are questions that stop a conversation before they initiate one.

I was having dinner with my husband Donald and a dear friend the other evening when the preceding question arose in my heart and came out of my mouth.

“What did you dream of being earlier in your life?”

I will not share in this public forum the answers that were given after a somewhat stunned silence. It was a rich, beautiful, meaningful conversation that continues to sing within my being. Most of my readers know that my beloved Donald has Lewy Body dementia, though he remains cognitively high functioning. Yet it was clear that while there is a level of forgetfulness for him dreams are always remembered. Many things can be taken from us but not the memory of what was virtually vital, moving, exciting.

I have shared before that most of my earlier dreams never actually came true. At least not in the way I thought they might. What did happen and what is crystal clear to me now is that the pursuit of my dreams led me not to their actualization but to what was more in alignment to my Souls purpose. Going after my dreams led me geographically to places where exactly what I needed was available and attainable. I met the people who would be most instrumental in helping me to see what I needed to see. I learned the exact right skills I needed to learn. There were opportunities that would have only opened in seemingly unrelated situations.

I had a lucid dream when I was a small child that changed my entire life. It was truly a revelation. Without going into details, I went to bed one person and was jolted awake by a dream, awakening as a truly different person. Even as a child I knew I would never be the same. I knew at a deep level that I would never fit into my family or cultural structure. I knew I was born for something different. What is perhaps most striking about this occurrence was that I was not afraid. The sense of aloneness in terms of my path felt right and true.

It has always felt right and true.

That was the truest dream of all for me. Oh, I had exciting dreams of what was possible. I had a level of talent that I cultivated and honed. I thought it would lead me to a life of accomplishment, even fame. Fortune. Awards. None of that really happened. And now I understand that all of that would have been in the category of booby prize.

I giggle to myself when I ponder that I am glad I never really made something out of myself because then I would have had to maintain that. I would have endured the pressure of trying to stay relevant. It would have been a constant striving for the next job.

I was never meant for that.

And so, my dreams were a map to a life beyond my dreams.

That does not mean I did not feel disappointed or discouraged. It does not mean I did not grieve what I thought was in store.

I did grieve. Indeed.

And that grieving was an essential part of the path to a deeper, broader fulfillment. I picked up the pieces of my broken dreams and formed a whole new vision for what was possible for me. Of what was essentially and authentically my part in this Masterwork called life. I recollected my talents, gifts, abilities and asked to be shown where, when, and how I might use them on behalf of something greater than myself.

I became clear that much of my dream for status, fame, fortune was in reaction to never feeling like I was enough. I did not grow up with almost any approval or affirmation. I wanted applause to drown out the condemning voices so prevalent in my head. I wanted bright lights to shine upon me because I did not yet know the Light that was meant to shine from within me. I wanted to stand out from the crowd because I secretly felt I didn’t belong anywhere and with anyone.

Just as that dream-revelation of my childhood jolted me awake the loss of my goal-like dreams gradually led to an awakening that never would have happened if I had realized the surface life I was dreaming of.

The stage lights would have obscured my inner light. The cheering would have drowned my inner voice. The striving to remain relevant would have distracted me from the true calling of my Soul.

I am certain that there are people for which that would not be true. They can have the applause and the awakening. And I am clear that would not have been the case for me.

I am clear that my dreams led me to my greatest joy and most wondrous fulfillment. And that happened because they did not come true. In not coming true they led me to a life that has had a lot of struggle yet also a vast amount of overcoming and subsequent service. I have never fit in. And I belong to myself in ways that are beyond my dreams.

And so dear readers, “What did you dream of being earlier in life?”

And did those dreams come true?

And whether they did or not to what did the pursuit of those dreams lead you?

May you know, dear ones, a life beyond your wildest dreams.

May your dreams awaken you to what you were always meant to be.

OUT OF THE CRUMBLING

2023-01-07T17:04:00.000-05:00

My first message of this new year may not at first seem hopeful.

I assure you it is.

Systems everywhere are crumbling.

The status quo is failing because it is no longer sustainable.

The old order has passed away, never to return.

There is chaos, energetic devastation all around us.

Individual lives are crumbling just as is the collective consciousness. Those are not two separate things. They are one. Or more accurately they IS one. We are holographic beings. What is in the whole is in the One.

What is in the Whole is in the One.

There is a Cosmic crumbling of the old order. There is chaos. There is disaster. There is darkness and there is devastation. I invite you to stay alert because energetic artifacts are flying all about. Religions are dying. Systems are dying. Governments are dying. Groups and societies of all sorts are crumbling and disintegrating and dying.

And amid all of that scariness and messiness is perhaps a greater potential than we have ever seen or known. And this is why I for one have great hope.

Nothing is crumbling or dying that doesn’t need to go. What is outmoded is appropriately being outcast. We are not losing anything. A new reality is coming into being. And it is a bumpy process. That is just the way it works.

I am beholding a massive crumbling that has been occurring in my life circumstances for the past few years. Enormous seeming losses. Multiple rejections, if I choose to frame them that way. A reordering in almost every area of my living. And what has not begun to actively crumble is definitely showing cracks.

I am grateful to be in a place in consciousness that sees it all for what it is. A shifting, a reordering in consciousness. I know that it is in service of my evolution. I do not fear it. I truly do not. I am moving with it. I am up to the task. I have great faith from direct lived experience. I actively live in a Universe that supports my highest unfoldment. I follow Its promptings. When something starts to crumble, I blow it a kiss and say goodbye. No clinging to what no longer serves. I did that for decades. I do not do that anymore.

I am enhanced by the knowing that as what is in the Whole is in the One my personal crumbling and rebuilding has a direct influence on all living beings. I have an impact on the entire collective Field. This is true for all of us. I just choose to own it and live actively from it. I do so gratefully, faithfully, wakefully, and consistently.

So, I say let it all crumble! Let it all fall. Most of it was no longer working anyway. We are meant to evolve, grow, and change. We can only do that if we let go of what was. The Cosmic consciousness is creating a void and it will fill it with something far better. We are simply asked to cooperate. To stop trying to hold together a crumbling world. It fulfilled its purpose. And something new beneath is what is causing the crumbling.

And so, my first blog of 2023 is one of great hope: systems everywhere are crumbling. Things are falling apart. A great purging is in process.

Let it happen.

We are in this together. We are each a part of the same whole. We are holons who are called to live on behalf of the whole. Let’s be bold and brave, courageous as we crumble together.

Something wondrous is coming forth. I can feel it. These are faith-quakes we are feeling, and that is okay. Trust. Rely on something greater than the fear-based self. Say goodbye to what no longer serves. And say hello to what you as of yet cannot see.

Out of the crumbling is coming a whole new order of living, giving, serving. We are going to see a higher level of human expression than we have ever seen. I know it to be so. Take my word for it. Or not. Either way it is the vision I am holding. For myself and for all living beings.

Out of the crumble, a whole new world.

Bring it on.

WHAT I AM NOT

2022-12-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

I am in an even more than usual state of introspection.

That most certainly includes a heavy dose of retrospection.

The holidays and the pending end of a calendar year often invoke those states within me. While the holidays increase the level of activity for people in my vocation, they also always compel me to desire increased time in non-doing. This can for sure cause some tension. I do not resist the tension. I just go into it, knowing some needed fodder is emerging.

And so, my state of introspection has been deepening, as has my retrospective exploration.

Memories have been arising that are accompanied by many varied waves of responsive energies. Memories from early childhood. Memories of holidays and people past. Memories that take me by surprise, and many that take my breath away. Memories of when Christmas had an intense magic to it. Memories of lights and sounds and gifts and tastes. Images of trees and manger scenes, frosty windows and visible breath. Letters to Santa and Sunday school pageants. I have laughed and I have cried. I have regretted and I have celebrated.

Retrospective introspection. Even more than usual.

As I contemplate my interior and surf the waves of grief and of joy, I reflect on what my lifetime has been about. The patterns. The blockages and the places that have always seemed to flow. The people who have uplifted me, and the people who have put me down. The events, circumstances, relationships that were and are significant.

I reflect on so many losses, starting at an early age. The decades have indeed been punctuated by losses. Significant, life changing losses. While human beings naturally lean away from and avoid loss, I have been gifted to learn to lean into them and seek to glean the gifts I somehow knew they contained. As a result, my many losses have been meaningful. They have been expanding. They have helped to cultivate resilience, fortitude, tenacity, and steadfastness. I have deep clarity around how much I have learned from these repeated losses. How strong I have become from my myriad goodbyes.

And now, at another holiday and end of year season, I am amid yet another intensified period of introspection and retrospection. I am in the middle of what could be a slow and long goodbye. Anticipatory grief is my subtle yet persistent companion. And I am strong, resilient, stable enough to lean into it without becoming it. I nod it good morning and I kiss it goodnight. I see it as both personal and pattern. It is familiar and it is new. It seems ancient, and also now.

There are many things that I have become as a result of a goodbye punctuated lifetime. I am beyond grateful for most of those things. I perhaps have more bruises than some. I can be more withdrawn than most. I have scars. Oh my, I have scars. Yet with all the wounds there is one thing I have not become. This is perhaps my greatest source of appreciation in terms of what I could have become.

With all of the hurts and losses, I have not become bitter.

I am not bitter.

I do not write these words from a surface type of awareness. I have gone deeply into an intentional introspection around this. I have led with my heart into a retrospective deep dive into how my losses have shaped me. In what ways they have made me more closed, and in what ways I have chosen to be more open. I have intimately touched those bruises and scars. I have attended to them without regret or evaluation. I have gained clarity and insight as to what meaning a lifetime of loss has gifted me with.

I am better as a result. I am not bitter.

I could easily have become bitter.

I am not.

I am bruised it is true.

And I am better.

I have been made better by goodbyes, not bitter. That gives each loss great meaning. It allows me to know my tears have cleansed my heart while also watering the garden of my consciousness. I do not fear loss. Mine or yours. I may wince, but I do not run away. Doors can be slammed in my face, yet my heart remains wide open.

Every loss has become a gain.

And so, this holiday season there will be little outward celebration as I attend to added responsibilities as a fulltime caregiver that also works fulltime. I remain open as I attend to my attending. I do so while being intensely intimate to my interior, my past, my present. I embrace it all from a spacious betterment that has expanded beyond bitterness.

I am grateful for my proclivity toward introspection. For contemplation. For deep dives into consciousness and emotional fluency. For the memories sweet and tragic. For Christmases with much and Christmases with little. It has been a beautiful, magical, painful, sometimes regretful, always wondrous journey. Adventure. Loses and gains, I have searched, and I have found meaning in it all.

And, best of all, I am not bitter as a result. For better and for worse I have become better.

And for that I am better than glad. I am blessed.

ECHOES

2022-11-12T13:41:00.003-05:00

The silence was as memorable as it was deafening.

And perhaps it was the deafening nature of the silence that makes it so memorable.

I was eleven years old when my father got lost driving home from church.

Eleven years of age.

My father had driven that route countless times. To church. Home from church. It was an approximately five-mile trip. Depending on the way we went it involved three streets.

Three streets. Five miles. Repetitive route. Over and over. Back and forth. Year after year.

It was deafening. Memorable. Life changing. Earth shattering.

The deafening, memorable, life-changing, earth-shattering event happened in the silence.

As I recall I was lost in my thoughts regarding the next days report cards. I knew where we were but was not giving that much notice until I heard her strained voice asking this question.

“Bill, do you know where you are?”

The question was followed by a silence that to this writing is deafening, memorable, shattering. The silence not only contained the answer. It was the answer.

I only vaguely recall a whispered “no” that came from a place so raw, so naked, so revealing that I never saw or heard my father in the same way again.

The silence between the question and the answer changed the trajectory of my entire life. It abruptly and violently ended my childhood. It was a reactive silence, yet somehow revelatory of something I had dreaded and anticipated. It was quantum, and it was oddly and irrationally familiar.

It seemed to be an echo of a trauma that had already somehow occurred.

Even at age eleven I well knew that my paternal grandfather had died due to an early onset dementia. This occurred before I was born. I also knew that two of my dad’s older brothers were exhibiting symptoms of the same disorder. And so, I knew that when my father got lost driving the oft repeated route to home that it would most likely be indicative that the familial malady was repeating in a nuclear way.

It was not long after that fateful and life altering car ride that our earth continued to shatter in practical and unmistakable ways. Echoes of memory loss became more and more frequent to the point where they became the norm. I became a caregiver before I departed elementary school. There were no more questions as to if my father knew where he was, or even if he knew who he was. And in less than five years he didn’t know who I was.

My father did not know who I was.

Yet it all felt familiar even as it was tragically happening. Like an echo of something I knew would happen. Maybe sooner. Maybe later. I knew it would happen. I somehow knew it would all happen.

The silence had told me so.

There is always a context of deafening silence deep within me. Shattered pieces of my broken heart are all around for me to behold. I hear echoes of questions that have no answers, yet the deafening silence is somehow still the answer. I still see the terrified profile of my mother’s face. I still hear the strained to breaking tone of her questioning voice. I knew as she asked, she already knew the answer. I already knew the answer. We all already knew the answer.

The deafening silence was the answer.

Echoes of that traumatic occurrence have punctuated my life experience. Circumstances present. Questions arise. Silence ensues. And the silence is the answer.

The deafening, memorable, life-changing, earth-shattering answer.

Repeating echoes of that childhood trauma arise, present, move within me and shake me to the core. Yet now I can relate to them as the echoes that they are. As repeating traumas. As patterns of grief that are seeking resolution. I am clear that I am not that eleven-year-old riding in the back of a Ford station wagon feeling my childhood being violently ripped from me.

That was then.

This movement I feel within me is an echo of the event. An emotional echo that I can now wakefully open to. Accept. Remember in an embodied way. Embrace. Allow the silence of my now presence to listen to the echo until it gently passes from my awareness. It may well repeat again. And with every repetition the silence becomes less deafening and more embracing.

Case in point.

In 2017 my husband Donald and I decided to ride to the nearby DQ to get an evening treat. More specifically, I was riding, and Donald was driving. On the brief ride home Donald began to drive more and more slowly as he began to navigate an odd route to get to our home. I felt an enormous emotional echo begin to fill my heart and churn within my solar plexus. I began to choke on the question that I knew I needed to ask.

“Donald, do you know where you are?”

Though I was in the passenger seat beside him I could clearly see my own profile from the back seat behind Donald. I heard the strain and terror in my voice. I felt the enormity of the experience. The pattern. The repetition. The trauma. The deafening ending and the terrifying beginning.

His silence was the answer.

Echoes of the past presenting in the present.

The eleven-year-old.

The now sixty-five-year-old.

The familiar echoes of a lifetime.

And yet somehow, I am new and so it is new. That was then, and I am now. There are echoes for sure. Yet I now know that I am the Silence and so the answers are within me. The silence is far less deafening. Less earth shattering. I know I can relate and to listen to the echoes and to pick up the pieces and move on whether I know where I am going or not.

I am very clear that while others may suggest it, I am indeed not going “through it again.” The emotions are as familiar as are the echoes. That is true. But I am not eleven and Donald is not my father. The outcome will be different for I am vastly different. I don’t even ask the questions so much anymore.

I simply listen and embrace the echoes of a lifetime.

And they are sweet and less deafening and tragic and beautiful and repeating and healing. And I am grateful.

Same echoes.

Different listener.

STUCCO SPIRITUALITY

2022-10-29T14:11:00.001-04:00

So, today I want to write to you about stucco.

Okay, I know.

Stay with me?

I am in the midst of some pretty major home renovations. It began with impact windows, the cost of which was a very major impact to my bank account! Sixteen windows, a patio door, and three standard doors.
,br> Wow. Ouch. And thankful it is done and paid for.

Our home is of CBS construction, except for an add-on Florida room. The original owners built the Florida room of wood sometime in the early 60’s. There was some minor rotting to the wood when I purchased the house almost twenty years ago. It has progressed to the point where it proved to be problematic to the impact window job. I knew it was time to have some serious work done on that part of the house. One section of the wood had to be replaced to be able to support the weight of the impact window. After some investigation and advice from others far more knowledgeable about such things I contracted someone to stucco the outside of the Florida room.

Stucco.

Still with me?

The general contractor brought a laborer to assess the situation. A job cost was given, which, while high, seemed tame after paying for the impact windows. As I listened to the gentleman describe his process details, I was internally troubled by what seemed to me to be a missing aspect of the job.

He kept speaking of applying stucco over the existing wood.

Wood which was noticeably rotting.

I politely thanked him and him that I would let them know.

I let my contractor immediately know: no way.

He confirmed my assessment and said he would find someone that would replace the rotting wood, and then stucco over top of it.

So, why am I sharing these details with you?

My early days of new thought spirituality were revelatory, radical, and extremely exciting. They were also largely about the externals of my life. While I did not realize it at the time, they were a lot like applying effectual stucco over rotting wood consciousness.

Are you with me?

I know you are.

Trying to fix and plaster over situations and circumstances without addressing the underlying causal consciousness will always be a temporary distraction.

Had the first laborer applied stucco over the rotting wood it most likely would have appeared to solve the problem. It could have been painted over and looked great.

Temporarily.

The wood would have continued to rot under the stucco, and, after a time period, the stucco would have fallen away. It would have revealed the unattended rotting which would have advanced under the surface of the stucco.

Can I get a witness?

When spirituality is primarily about the surface it is much like stucco. Conditions and circumstances are always effects of our underlying consciousness. We all have some level of unconsciousness which amounts to our own personal “rotting.” This results in a level of discomfort and discontent. We don’t like what is showing up. Especially when it repeatedly shows up. In earlier stages of spirituality, we then try and stucco over the conditions we do not want to see. We misuse affirmations and plaster our minds with vision boards while skipping the most crucial step in any transformation.

We must deal with the rotting wood of old limiting beliefs. Outmoded senses of self. Core beliefs that bind and constrict. We must attend to consciously what lies within our own unconsciousness. Otherwise, we will stucco over the rotten consciousness with something that appears better temporarily. It will appear shiny and new.

And then…

The underlying “rotting” will advance while we are entranced with the surface. At some point sooner or later the surface stucco will fall away and the causal consciousness, in all of its rottenness, will be worse than ever.

A house or a home is always metaphysically representative of a field of consciousness. If a home is not properly maintained problems begin to occur. Short term fixes can lead to long term problems. Pink painting over rotten wood is a very short-term fix. Plastering stucco over rotten wood may buy more time. And it does not address the real issue. The causal issue.

When there is something amiss in my experience, I now know enough to explore the interior first, rather than trying to only fix external conditions. If there is rotting and decay, it is first and foremost in my field. It is causal. It is in consciousness. Everything out there reflects something in here. Always. Every time. No excepptions.

Every external problem must be resolved at the internal level.

I did my share of stuccoing over rotten wood in my consciousness. It never lasted. The effects I thought would solve the problem and satisfy my longing always fell away. I am grateful to know that. Very grateful. Grateful enough to want to share it with you.

I have moved from stucco to foundational spirituality. It does not mean I do not address circumstances and effects. I just do it at the causal level. I do it beneath the surface. I address my own wood rot rather than blaming and damning outer conditions. I attend to the withinness and then I seek to make the outer as pretty as is possible. I like beautiful things. But I do not identify with them. I live by the admonition “as within, so without.” As I let the outer reflect my transformed interior my life and my “house” get better and better. More and more beautiful at the real and depth level.

And as a result, my inner house is solid and stable. Much of the rotting has been exposed and attended to. I am not seduced into believing that if I stucco over problems the problems go away. Denial and suppression are not healing. Covering over and pretense are not healing. The rotting occurs in aspects of consciousness that indeed need to be exposed and that ultimately need to die. Only sustained, unflinching, and compassionate presence can do that.

It is indeed an inside job.

I type these words to the staccato rhythm of hammering that is the sound of the workers applying new wood to my Florida room. That wood then will sustain the soon to be applied stucco. I am confident in that the causal problem is being addressed and corrected first. I am grateful to immediately recognize the bigger-picture lesson, and I share it in hopes that it will be helpful to someone else.

A stucco spirituality isn’t about hiding the underneath.

A stucco spirituality is about deeply knowing that everything occurs in consciousness first. If you want a different result, you must deal with what may be rotting underneath. Do your inner work first. Forgive. Pray. Look intimately within. Be courageous. Be diligent. Address the inner and then have fun redecorating the outer. The more you put into the interior the more stable and lasting will be exterior effects.

Impact windows. Replacing rotting wood. Stucco. And finally, a new paint job. I picked a color called Kind Green. Got to love it. All part of making a house a suitable and sustainable home. Strong walls and supports. Pretty, warm, and even “kind” exterior.

Just like in here.

YOU CANNOT GET IT BACK

2022-10-22T14:13:00.006-04:00

Date night by yourself is surely a different experience.

I have been questioned several times recently about what is going on a) with my husband’s health, and b) why I have not been more public about that.

Alright. I guess that is valid.

So maybe today is the day. And I guess this will be the vehicle. After all, I do call this blog RADICAL EXPRESSION.

In 2016 my husband Donald was diagnosed erroneously with Alzheimer’s Disease. This came less than two months after my mothers passing. To say that I was devastated is the king of all understatements.

I felt shattered.

Donald was emphatic that he did not want other people to know about what was going on in him and for us. While I honored his request, I also knew I could not cut myself off from the support of those closest to me. With his hesitant permission, I was able to slightly enlarge our circle of transparency and so support.

One person particularly close to us helped us get into a research center that was Alzheimer’s specific. While I am leaving out many details for brevities sake, Donald and I began an adventure in Alzheimer’s that lasted for over two years.

In most ways Donald received excellent support and care. And yet something felt off about it, at least for me. I noticed physical symptoms that did not coincide with the usual effects of that kind of dementia. I brought this to the attention of the head of the research center, who assured me I was mistaken about what I increasingly believed to be a misdiagnosis. I stubbornly pointed to what I saw to be an extremely different trajectory of the disease. Donald was not declining at the rate typical of an Alzheimer’s patient. While grateful for that I was also internally nagged that the doctors were missing and so not treating what was going really on.

At the end of a rather contentious session at the center a palpable dawning occurred for the lead neurologist.

His usually booming and assured voice dropped several decimals as he said, “I think I may have been mistaken.”

And so ended our journey with Alzheimer’s.

And so began our journey with Lewy Body dementia.

Donald was and is a genius. That has gifted him with a brain that compensates in miraculous ways for the losses the growths are neurologically claiming. The trajectory and prognosis for patients of Lewy Body dementia is always unique. Donald’s has been comparatively slow.

Until recently.

As privately as Donald wanted to traverse through this illness it is no longer possible. Many obvious physical symptoms telegraph not exactly what is occurring, but certainly that something serious is occurring. It can no longer be hidden. He now requires a level of constant care. While I am blessed to be generously gifted with some in-home care for him, it is mostly mine to feed, dress, and provide for his everyday needs. His opportunities to venture away from home are minimal at this point.

Subsequently, so are mine.

He remains the undeniably adorable expression of humanity that I fell in love with more than thirteen and a half years ago. He is cognitively still at a relatively high level of function, especially for where we are in the typical progression. He has moments of wit that still bring me to gales of laughter. His smile still melts me. His eyes still dazzle me. He is still Donald.

And the Lewy Body rheostat dims his expression slightly with every passing day.

He is still Donald.

And yet somehow, he is not.

Little, almost imperceptible parts of him are lost, and I cannot get them back.

I cannot get him back.

No matter how well I feed and dress him, I cannot get him back.

No matter how privately I go about this, I cannot get him back.

No matter how much I am criticized or praised for how I go about this, I cannot get him back.

As I have an aide who watches over him on Friday evenings, I have taken to allowing myself an evening away from home on that night. It is my version of a date night. Except it is without my favorite date.

Last evening, I went to an outside café in a busy public space. It is somewhere Donald and I had been together. As I settled into a table and awaited my dinner, I looked around at a bustle of people all going about their Friday evening activities. I recalled the last time Donald and I had visited this spot together. I pondered our level of engagement at that time. What we said and what we did not say. What we might have said had me known it would be our last chance to date night there together.

As I glanced about, I noticed a couple at a nearby table. They were busily scrolling on their phones, seemingly oblivious to each other’s presence.

I wanted to go to them. I wanted to grab away their phones. I wanted to implore them to look at each other. To listen to each other. To speak openly to each other. To be fully there for each other. I wanted to somehow impress upon them to relish each precious moment they had together.

I wanted to shout to them: "Be together!Be here, now! Do not lose this experience!Do not miss this chance! You cannot get it back!"

Dammit. You cannot get it back.

To you reading these feeble yet heart-felt words: you cannot get it back. Each wondrous, awkward, painful, joyful, heart opening-breaking moment. Once they are gone you cannot get them back.

And so I am here to tell you that date night by yourself is surely a different experience.

And I chose to be fully present to the experience that I was having, as I allowed myself to simply have it. All of it. The memories and the current reality. What I have lost, and what I still have. The man Donald was, and the man Donald is now. Even with the rheostat continuing to dim, he is still the only man for me. He is still warm, smart, adorable, and witty. No one has ever loved me like Donald loves me. And I have never loved anyone the way I love Donald. And while Lewy Body can take many things it cannot take our love. No diagnosis can rob us of that. The prognosis is our love is forever. It is undimmable.

This is long. This is not really the blog I set out to write. I suspect it is more than most of you will want to read, let alone digest.

Yet it is what my heart feels compelled to share. It is what is currently unfolding for Donald and I. When asked for transparency I will not veil it with filters for other people’s comfort.

When asked to be real I give you what is real.What is raw.What is authentic and vital. And once I share it I do so knowing I cannot take it back.

And so my words go forth.

And I cannot get them back.

URGENCY

2022-10-15T16:10:00.004-04:00

I have grown to deeply appreciate the sweet discontent of urgency.

For the past few years, I have been dwelling in a growing sense of urgency. While there is a certain tension to it, a subtle sense of discomfort, it colors my days and moments in a way that I have no desire to change. I has added significant meaning to how I make choices, and to how I choose my ways of expressing.

Urgency has become a dear and trusted friend.

In my youth I had many lofty goals and dreams. Many of the things I wanted to achieve in terms of career were largely time relative. While my singing and acting capabilities were less so, my dancing and modeling expressions had expiration dates built in. As age had its way with physicality, I knew one day that those aspirations would peak and fade. That fact had an intensity about it, yet it was decidedly different than the urgency I feel long after those dreams were laid aside.

Perhaps that is because the dreams of my personality self are vastly different than the evolutionary aspirations of my Soul. I am extremely clear at this point in my human adventure that my entertainment career was never about those expressions as ends in themselves. I was never a great singer, dancer, actor, or model. I had just enough talent to make me viable in the New York market at the time. I needed to be in New York not to set the stage on fire. I needed to be in New York so that an inspirational fire would be set in me. It set the stage for what I was truly to be about on earth.

I look back at my life from my current perspective and I see so clearly how each situation, circumstance, relationship, move, talent, encounter led me to the exact next right thing along the journey to now. I see it all as a wondrous map of awakening. And awakening is where the sense of urgency kicks in.

In my youth I thought I had time. In fact, time was a context for how I lived. Sometimes my sense of time worked for me. And often, my sense of time worked against my highest expression.

Now, I know that my time in this human realm is limited. I guess I always knew that. But it has a very different feel at 65 then it did at 35. The sense of a limited time span is not in any way scary to me. It sweetens my days. It adds color to my mornings and my interactions. I weigh what is most important. My priorities have never been clearer.

I live with a heightened sense of urgency. This urgency is directly related to the fact that I very likely have a limited time left on this earth. I live each day aware more than ever that it could be my last. That adds an element of not only urgency, but also passion and even enthusiasm. I want to live with as much clarity, certainty, understanding, and love as possible. I want to be intensely conscious of the energy that I am emitting in each moment. In what I am adding to the field.

I feel an urgency to leave this world a better place for my having been here.

I did not and will not take the entertainment industry by storm.

I do not regret that. It was never mine to do.

I will not leave a memorable mark on this world.

I have no attachment or sense of remorse regarding that. It was never mine to do.

My moment-to-moment urgency is all about my state of being. My state of awakening. The way in which I relate to and contribute to others and to my world. My urgency is about doing my own inner work so that I can be my very best and highest expression. That is what colors my days and raises me up.

I urgently want to serve the world. I urgently want to help alleviate suffering. I urgently want to bring tenderness, love, compassion, mercy to my every encounter.

When I fall short, as I so often do, I feel a discontent. I do not try and deaden that feeling. I move right into it. It is the sweet discontent of urgency propelling me to be more. To give more. To love more. To use whatever time I have left to urgently make my little piece of earth a heaven for all I encounter.

And it is urgency that prompts me to share these words. These waves within my heart. It is urgency that types these feeble symbols that could never really capture the passion of my desired expression.

But here it is. My little urgency-driven gift to you, dear readers. I pray that you will receive it as an act of love. And if I never write another blog, please know that this was what I was meant to share on this day. In this time-limited life span. In a way that only I can express.

I urgently pray it will touch your heart.

THE DIVE

2022-10-08T19:34:00.003-04:00

I cannot swim yet I know I will never drown.

And that is not because I choose to stay away from the water.

During childhood one of my favorite escapes from an often painful and turbulent household was the annual week I got to spend away at church camp. There were admittedly aspects of this experience that I did not relish. Anyone who knows me as an adult would not have to stretch to imagine I am not the camping type. That was already established early in life. This camp did not entail tents or cooking over an open fire. The facilities were, for the time, simple yet not rustic. The grounds were beautiful, and the property had a good-sized lake so for me it was several acres of heaven.

And I was away from home.

Everyday we campers were kept to a specific schedule with mandatory activities. Those included morning prayer circle and chapel, Bible classes, and evening vespers followed by yet another chapel service. This was, after all, church camp.

Three meals were shared in a large dining hall. Between lunch and dinner there were (mandatory) periods of athletics on the field and then swimming in the lake. I was as inept at sports then as I am now. I endured the time of field sports in order to get to my time in the water. There was only one caveat to the swimming experience.

I couldn’t swim.

I have never learned to swim.

I also have never held this as a problem. Well, almost never.

On the dock that jutted out into Round Lake there two diving boards. There was a low board. And there was a high board. As a child the high board appeared equal to the height of the Empire State Building. While the sight of it filled me with fear it also captivated my curiosity. I was determined that I would begin by mastering the low board as a precursor to conquering the high board.

Did I mention I cannot swim?

It never occurred to me that the fact I could not swim was a problem in terms of my diving aspirations. I was too fixated on a vision of me jumping high into the air like a soaring orca to worry about landing in a medium I had no idea how to navigate. I basically figured that I would deal with that post-splash. And I knew I had a secret talent that applied would make me a shoe in for the diving experience.

The camp personnel had a different idea.

In order to be permitted to use the diving boards each camper had to pass a non-negotiable swimming test. The test consisted of swimming from the main dock to a floating dock several yards away.You were then required to swim back to the main dock. As I pondered this temporary obstacle to my Mark Spitz moment I did so looking into the chiseled jaw and steely eyes of the lead lifeguard.He seemed to have no flexibility regarding his authority over the lake and the activities that occured in it. You had to know how to swim in order to be allowed to dive.

I knew this was not going to be easy.

I also knew that this was only a six-day experience and so I was going to either rapidly learn to swim in record time or hatch a plan to get past this Godzilla in speedos really quickly. The latter seemed the more viable choice.

While I knew for sure that I could not swim a lick I also knew that I was an expert floater. This was my secert super power. I have no recall of ever being taught this skill. It simply was something I could do from the first time I entered a pool. And so, it made perfect sense to my still optimistic childlike mind that this was a suitable substitution to the required skill of swimming in order to dive.

On Monday afternoon of church camp, I was in the group that had field athletics first. This torment was made durable by the mental planning I entertained as to how I would orchestrate my way around Mr. Lifeguard. I mentally rehearsed various approaches. As I missed catching the last ball from center field the whistle blew, and I knew my chance was at hand.

My stomach churned. My mind raced. My palms sweated. Though I was at a church camp with no less than six hours of Bible everyday my faith was shallow as I longed to dive into the deep.

This is where I should confidently report to you, my readers, that I mustered all the swagger available to an eight-year-old Olympic protégé bound for a gold in floating and dove into the portals of Round Lake history.

And reporting it would not make it true.

I caved.

Tuesday.

I approached, caught Godzilla’s notice, and then shrank away into the shallow end. I was literally and figuritively all wet.

During Wednesday’s touch football debacle, I knew this was to be my day. I changed into my mildew scented trunks and determinably approached my by then wise to me nemesis.

“I am ready to take the swimming test.”

One eyebrow raised. He smirked. I strode to the end of the dock and Godzilla loudly proclaimed “get in.”

Pointing to the floating dock I meekly asked “Does it matter how I get from here to there?” I then stuttered. “And back?”

His stare was piercing. Unwavering. I thought I had lost him and any hopes of the boards.

And then I saw a faint flicker of humor in his eyes. Almost imperceptible yet also undeniable.

I had him.

“Go ahead and give it a try.”

And so I floated my way to one of the sweetest victories of my life.

I did not attempt the high board that year. I belly-flopped off the low board unashamed and undeterred. I floated back to the ladder and climbed out of Round Lake and into a life-long realization:

There are many things that I will never be able to accomplish in this lifetime. Many hurtles I cannot leap over. Many mountains I will never climb. I am not a being of great physical strength or prowess. I am not a physical overcomer. I will never jump off a high, low, or any diving board ever again.

Yet I can float as well as anyone I know. I can and do go deep. I move with the currents of life. I naturally allow life to buoy me up. I have my own way of accomplishing, and my own standards of success. And when the odds are against me, I will find a way to both go deep and rise above. And I can charm my way past any Godzilla, even ones wearing church-inappropriate speedos.

So, in the lake of life, it is true that I cannot swim. And yet I know I will never drown. Because I was born with a natural ability to float. Situations can pull me under, and I pop right back up. I can’t catch a ball, but I can step out of the way of one. I am always teachable, usually flexible. I may fear the high board, but it doesn’t stop me from climbing and fearfully leaping.

I know that when I leap, I will plunge deep. I also know that I will rise to the surface. And I will float easily until I leap again.

A lot of time and experience have happened since my days at Round Lake. Yet I carry the lessons with me.

And I know if I can float I will never, ever drown. And I can always choose to float.

KNOWING MY PLACE

2022-06-25T15:46:00.000-04:00

“Know your place, young man!”

I finally do.

My paternal grandmother used to use that phrase when she was angry with me. She applied it in multiple ways, none that felt helpful or hopeful. She forcefully spit it at me to put me in my place, or at least what she determined that to be.

For most of my life I haven’t really known what my place was. I did not feel like I fit in from my earliest recollections. I did not fit in with family, education, and religious structures, or even inside of myself. It left me feeling alone, frightened, and disconnected. I also had a vague notion that while I did not fit in, and was left with the subsequent troubling emotions, I also was not meant to fit in. I was not supposed to be a part of my surrounding structures. While it did not make sense, I was quite certain this was true. And so began a quest to find my place.

I of course first looked everywhere around me. I looked outside of me. I looked to other people, organizations, geographic locations. If I didn’t fit in here, I looked there. If I was not to be a part if this group, I would try that one. Wrong school? Transfer. Troubling relationships? Disconnect and find another. Painful interactions? Push away. Run. Flee. Unplug. Try the next.

Grandma, where in the hell IS my place? How can I know my place when I can’t find it?

Today I am sixty-five years and sixty-five days old. Grandma is long gone. While I spent many decades trying to find my place, today, I am finally certain of and content with where my place is.

My place is right here inside of my own heart.

I was never meant to fit in. Of that I am certain. There is a place of truth within me that knows I was born not to fit in but to stand out. I do not mean that in an arrogant way. I simply know that I was born a leader. I have never been a follower. I am an introvert for sure. Yet I have always been put in leadership roles from the playground to the boardroom. I spent far more time on the stage or platform than I did in the audience or congregation. I have never been a devotee. I have never had a guru. My inner being has always been my primary guidance system. I have repeatedly been called to live by Its dictates and directions. That has been my place to live in and from. Very few exceptions.

My internal realm is my place. My Sourced presence. That is my unwavering place of power. Finding that place has been central to my purpose. It is where I abide and from where I serve. I have never been clearer of that. And never more grateful to know it.

I have never had a lot of friends. I never felt the need for that. The place in which I dwell cannot be crowded. I need room to be and to breathe freely. I am clearer than ever that my definition of friend differs from most people around me. I am good with that. I need a lot of space. A lot of alone time. A lot of air. I have never felt lonely when I am alone. You see, in my place I am never alone. I have lots of company. My angels, masters, guides are prolific. They never tell me to “know my place.” They know I am always in it. And they are always available to me in my place.

I currently am leading a spiritual community. It is my primary form of service. I know that for now it is the place I am called to be. I am married, and I have a few friends who are quality individuals that share similar values. My life is simple. Unhurried and not particularly busy. I direct it that way, so that I do not lose connection with my place. I am surrounded by many acquaintances, which for me is the appropriate perspective. I am not too drawn to social media, though I use it as I feel called to uplift others. Those sites are not my place. Facebook “friends” are not really my people.

Two and a half years of much social distancing and working mostly from home has made my place clearer than it has ever been. My priorities are crystal clear. My sense of connection and places of belonging are now beyond question. My values and boundaries are solid and provide me with incredible strength and stability. I have never been less attached to approval and outer accolades. The more centered and authentic I am expressing the less outer feedback I obtain. I have a deep curiosity and appreciation of that fact. I find it fascinating rather than humiliating. The more authentic my posts feel the less “likes” I get. It makes my autonomy increasingly steadfast. While I pray to be helpful to others I am no longer navigated by outer approval.

I am not shaken from my place by what others think of or say about me. It is not that connection is not important. It is. Yet it is my own place of unwavering connection and belonging that is most vital. That is the connection that I most cultivate and attend to. That is where I know I am to live from.

That is what I have come to know as my place.

So, I am preparing to take a vacation and an extended sabbatical from public writing and social media. I am dedicating some time to really being in my place. I am giving added space to my work schedule. I will be resting and renewing by giving increased attention to my inner place of being. I exhale more fully even typing those words. I will not be running from place to place. I will be sitting, staring off and within, breathing deeply and attending vigilantly to my precious inner place.

And I am profoundly grateful to finally know where that is.

PRIDE?

2022-06-09T10:09:00.002-04:00

It is “Pride Month,” and I cannot say that I feel pride.

Please do read on.

I moved to New York City from Ohio in the mid-80’s. It was in New York that I first directly experienced an LBGTQ+ event. Back then it was simply called Gay Pride. There was a parade and a festival. It was all very, well, gay. A bit overwhelming for an Ohio boy. I admit that some of the displays of “pride” behavior made me feel very uncomfortable. I knew that they were in the name of freedom. And I felt that the demonstrations were more alienating than they were harmonizing with the larger population. In a spirit of transparency, I still grapple with that. While I refuse to fit in and hide as a result of societal norms, I also question sabotaging connection for the sake of what can feel outrageous.

I “came out” at nineteen. Back then it was a courageous act that cost me family members, friends, and a felt degree of safety. Things were changing, but slowly and even dangerously. In retrospect I left the closet incrementally and with caution. I stepped out, and at times ran back in. People would declare their acceptance, and then betray that with side comments and thinly veiled homophobia. I exposed my authenticity only to have it trampled upon many times. It truly was a process with many hurts and many gains. And I freely admit that the same back and forth was happening inside of me. About me.

I did not grow up with any real experience of pride in general. My parents never once told me that they were proud of me. I never heard it from teachers or clergy. I just do not ever recall hearing it. I have no internal Velcro for it. I have never accomplished anything for which I felt pride. Never. It just isn’t a part of my wiring.

I do not know pride.

So, when I attended my first Gay Pride event, I really did not understand it, I did not feel pride internally, and I could not connect to the pride of the throngs of people parading, dancing, drinking, outrageously behaving. I suspected there was something wrong with me that I did not feel such jubilation. I felt added freedom. I felt like the door to the closet had been ripped from the hinges.I felt comradery with many if not all of my fellow LGBTQ+ expresses. I just had no sense of pride.

I also did not feel the same level of oppressive shame. I did feel as if there was power in numbers and in authenticity. In New York I could be my full self and really feel a sense of coming out. From my perspective, Ohio was the closet and New York was the land of freedom. There was some naivete in that for sure. Yet I felt a true sense of liberation even if it did not equate to pride.

The shedding of shame was also a process. There were layers of grief, fear, anger, and shame to feel my way through. There was a heavy armor to be removed. It has taken decades. I am certain I will never be completely clear. I have done enormous work. Courageous work if I may say. Tenacious work. And there will always be work to be done. I was told as a child that what I secretly knew I was, was an abomination. A violation against God. That was shattering to this being who always felt a deep and profound call to the sacred. There was no place for me at that table. I was relegated to back ally bars and once a year festivals.

So, with all that work that I did I wish I could say I was proud.

At sixty-five I have long left Pride parades and festivals behind. I simply feel no need or draw to them. Maybe its age. And maybe it is the enormous amount of internal work I have personally paraded through. I now leave to younger generations the events, festivities, and deliberate activism. I know that they get to express as freely as they do because of my work and the work of my and even older generations. I know there is still danger. Hardly gained rights are even now being threatened once again. My activism now is being true to my full expression. I am a gay man married to another man. I minister without a hint of hiding. I give kudos to the organization that hired me. It was a risk, even in a more liberal spiritual environment. They were brave. And so am I.

I have come a long way. Yet I still do not feel pride. I cannot honestly say I am proud to be a gay man. It simply feels like a part of my total being. It is an important part. Yet it is a part. As is gender. As is height and weight. Hair and eye color. I am a complex being comprised of so many aspects and parts. I am first and foremost a Spiritual being. I am here to be fully human and freely Divine. Being gay is an important part of my Soul adventure, of that I am clear. I have come to embrace it. It has come with many challenges and hurts. I could not honestly say I would choose it if I had the conscious choice. I never understand people who say it is a choice we make. I do not remember a time when my orientation was anything other than homosexual. I also know it is integral to my unfolding here in this incarnation. I accept and embrace it as such.

I just would call it pride.

I write this for those who do celebrate June as Pride month, and who genuinely feel their own sense of pride. It does not dismay me that I do not. I will relish and celebrate my sense of acceptance, freedom, transparency, liberation. That fills my heart. It fills me that I am writing this and will gladly and freely take the risk of sharing it with a world in which I am still not universally accepted. I do not feel the need to be. I get to live in my own sense of acceptance and even self-celebration. It has taken a lot to get to this. A lot.

I almost feel proud.

BE MORE DO LESS

2022-06-04T14:12:00.002-04:00

The older I get the more I appreciate efficacy. And that is the foundation of my prayer life.

While it is always true, I am writing this blog solely for myself. And I trust it will touch one other person.

There is a repetitious perspective that is being echoed seemingly everywhere these days.

“Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”

Every time I see and hear this admonition my gut registers the same response.

Thunk

My take on this, and remember that I am writing this for me, is that people who cling to that perspective are tossing off a few mental prayers and then diving into what is often excessive and ineffective action.

Someone recently said to me “my thoughts and prayers are with you.” I know this person well enough to be authentic in my response.

“Thank you. Keep your thoughts, and I welcome your prayers.”

I continually hear simply praying is not enough. I repeatedly hear that it is action that is needed. And I confess to feeling a double thunk.

For me prayer IS action! It is sometimes referred to as Divine Activity. It is the activity via Universal Law to our felt-prayer energy. It is quantum engagement. It is transformative energy. It is the most efficient of activities. It happens in the invisible realm. It attunes us to the vibration of Source. It allows us to very literally heaven earth.

The physical realm and all that is happening are effects of consciousness. Taking non-prayerful action simply rearranges the effects without accessing Cause. We are overdoing because we are first under-being. We are always being beckoned and beseeched to Co-create in consciousness first. To invite and then to court a vision of a transformed reality. To do so we need to spiritually detach from the effects of the manifest realm. We need to activate our Source-guiding Imagination. We pray into the feeling of that. It is not merely mental. Mental prayer has little power. The power is in the felt. It is in the Presence. It is heart centered. It radiates out virtually first. Then that radiation provides a clear guidance as to what needs to be done. To act without deep felt prayer is rearranging the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

I know and appreciate that we all have programmed bias. The majority of people in our culture are of a doing bias. I am not framing that as somehow wrong. It does have its weaknesses, however. As does a being bias, which has become my personal mo. And, as the Buddha taught “there is nothing more ineffective as action without prayer.” I used to run around in what I now see as excessive and mostly ineffective doing. I now recognize that by praying first and deeply, my actions are fueled and imbued by the Inspiration within me.

And so, the longer I am treading a conscious spiritual way of living the more I appreciate the unparalleled power of prayer, of Divine Activity. I do less as I be more. I only take action from a place of prayerful consciousness. It is felt first, and then becomes thought and then action. In that order. I am crystal clear that prayer is the most important part of that dynamic. I do not diminish action. I simply keep it in perspective.

As I began, the older the get the more I appreciate efficacy. Efficiency. I appreciate accessing a Power Greater than myself. I attune and vibrate at that frequency. I glean a vision from it. I steep in it at the felt level. And then I act from it. I trust then that what unfolds is in service of the vision. Activating timeless spirit, I do have to wait on a manifestation. I let it happen as I continue to hold prayer space. It is a way of being that truly works for me.

Prayer truly works for me. In me. And so in the world.

NO REGRETS?

2022-06-02T16:16:00.002-04:00

I personally don’t understand the notion of not having regrets.

Perhaps I should have preceded that statement with a spoiler alert disclaimer.

I recently saw yet another meme posted by someone I respect that spoke of having no regrets. While I certainly have no need to argue with this person’s experience or perspective, I still do not understand it. From a clinical perspective it is five-year old’s and sociopaths who truly have no regrets. Regret, like guilt, is adaptive. It is healthy. It is guidance. Regret can be a master teacher if we let it be. It shows us when we are out of touch with our values. When we have mistreated others. When we are out of integrity with our word. It brings us out of our concepts and into our reality. Regret serves congruency.

I have regrets for sure. And I have used them. They have assisted and guided me. They have led me to forgiveness and amends. They have made me a better person. Having used my regrets, they no longer use me. So, while it may be culturally and spiritually-correct to claim no regrets, I have found them to be angels that got my attention and altered my attitudes and behaviors. They let me know in no uncertain terms that I have a conscious, and that I needed to change the way I was showing up. Uncomfortable does not equate to unbeneficial.

If I speak or act unconsciously my angel of regret points it out immediately. The more I have acted on the guidance the more friendly I have become with regret. I do not avoid it. I welcome it. The discomfort is a small price to pay for where it leads me. This part of our healthy humanity is precious to me. I do not make it a problem, and so for me it is not.

Let me just say this: not regretting regret is a great place for me to reside. I also do not feel guilty for experiencing guilt. Again; regret and guilt are adaptive. I am not five, and am clearly not a sociopath. I know that because I occasionally feel regret.

So, I personally don’t understand the notion of not having regrets. It is okay for you. Just not for me.

And that I do not regret.