Tag Archives: spirit

A Perfect Storm


I love a good storm. The kind where the wind blows so strongly it feels as if I jumped, I could fly as far as the winds would take me. Strong enough to tickle my clothes against my skin in strapping slaps. The kind that threatens imminent danger but harms nobody. The kind that cracks branches, throws flower pots, and stomps through the curtains flying in my windows.

I love a good storm. The kind where stepping out of shelter immediately soggys my clothing. The rain that forces me to seek an umbrella in a feeble hope that it will be enough. The kind of rain that outcries every sad moment; Cleansing deep down into my spirit.

I love a good storm. The kind that holds the early summer heat intimately as a lover. The kind that compels me to lay naked on my bed with the windows wide open, towels on the windowsills. The moment when the heat speaks the language of eternity and I bow in submission.

I love a good storm. The kind where rage-full graces flash across the sky. The kind that turns the sky with powerful strokes into a momentary masterpiece. The chocolate sky drizzles cotton candy oranges onto a grey palette. The kind that temporarily freezes the world; burning into my retinas. It’s a perfect snapshot of my world, gifted to my memories.

I love a good storm. The kind that sounds like it explodes my windows with the force of it’s response. The kind that shakes the earthworms up from their homes. The kind that startles me with its ferocity. Or the kind that washes the air with bass so rich the earth applauds. Man, I do love a good storm.

My path to Spiritual Love

Hello there! You’ve indulged my need to post poems for a couple of weeks now. For that indulgence, I thank you. I’ve been grateful for the kindness you’ve shown as I show you snapshots of the people in my life and although there are more that I will be sharing, I thought it would be nice if you could see a snapshot of me and pray the same indulgence.

I’m not telling you this story to be a witness or a proponent of the church I am now a member of, but to explain how I came to my own realization of my own faith. I don’t think anyone or anything can tell you how to find faith, love, or even whether or not God exists. I find love and God, in my life, to be synonymous. It’s my goal to help others because that satisfies my love for myself, my love for my neighbors, and builds a stronger community. I’m not asking for you to believe as I do nor am I encouraging you to follow my path. I say, flat out, that I’m not a Christian and I experience God like the Cowardly Lion,  “I do believe. I do believe. I do believe in ghosts!” But I do try to live by a basic rule, Love My Neighbor as Myself. It is difficult to do when people don’t “get” me, but I still put forth the effort because I also use Namaste.

We are ONE

We are ONE

I’ve attended so many different churches and other religious establishments in my lifetime. No matter where I landed my butt on a Sunday morning, my primary concern of finding faith in the love of God became discarded after a conversation with a pastor’s wife in Lake Station, IN. At the time, I attended and was heavily involved in a Covenant church which has rather extreme views about the roles of women and men. It felt awkward, but it pleased my husband so…I went, participated, and attempted to alter my heart to fit into the culture.

The nutshell version of that garden conversation is this: God won’t accept you if you don’t believe in Jesus.

This did not fit with my heart. It didn’t even come close. At that moment I realized, that for me, God (or whatever face you see or don’t) can’t be contained into a neat label any more than an individual can be labeled only one thing. I left the church in search of Love as the face of God.

Johnny Lee’s 1980 hit, “Looking for love (in all the wrong places)” fits quite nicely. I searched everywhere I could think to without results. Years passed, I didn’t even claim faith any more. At times I’d even mock the faithful for being so gullible as to fall into the junkie mentality with religious fervor and misguided ideals.

A shift in the spiritual winds of my soul started out as a light breeze, but about two years ago, it hit with a hurricane force. There was no fanfare. There wasn’t anybody asking me to go to their church. There wasn’t any outside influence suggesting to me via written, conversational, or other form of communication telling me to go to church. It just happened. A screaming Mimi in my mind saying, “GO NOW!”

A friend of mine held a group that I really dig at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church (ORUUC). The fact that they allowed that particular group to meet under their roof (It’s the Red Tent Temple) caught my attention. Noting the time of their service as I drove past, I thought, well if I get up on Sunday, I’ll give it a try. I had no intention of honoring that fleeting thought.

As it happened, my eyes popped open early enough to not only shower, drink coffee, dress, lounge, and still make it to the service that I felt compelled to comply with my intuition that started doing a happy dance as soon as I accepted the wisdom.

I entered the church expecting what I was familiar with, a fashion show with pretty people pretending to be good long enough to get a pat on the head from the pastor then back to neglecting their spirits for the rest of the week. Cynical, yes, but that’s how I viewed the church.

Instead, there were people in jeans, dresses, suits, bohemian eclectic, dressy casual, and they were hugging each other. Genuinely hugging. Not the “A” hugs where the hips don’t meet. Not the half-hugs where an arm and a hip touch. But “I” hugs, the sincerely glad to see you kind. The welcome table had a sign in sheet and name tags. I refrained. I figured if they want to know, they’ll ask. It weirded me out as the service time got closer when I saw friend after friend of mine from social media arriving. Then I was the one being embraced with “I” hugs. I was still resisting.

The service was pretty typical at first. Call to worship, blah blah blah. But, the first hymn I heard? John Lennon’s “Imagine.” That got my attention. Who in the world uses secular music, even with peaceful intent, in a church service? My WTF button came out of my pocket as my skepticism faded. I checked the bulletin and found that the next hymn would be John Denver’s “Sunshine on my shoulders.” I choked through the rest of the service in disbelief. Who were these people?!

I didn’t go back for a long time, over a year I think, because the idea that there were others like me searching on their own paths gave me pause. But there was something that called me to return to “those people.” I started attending pretty regularly. Atheists, Buddhists, Humanists, Christians, Jewish, Conservationists, Scientists, all of them together under the same roof in the spirit of love.

One of those people and I had a conversation. She said that everything was created by God but humans are the only one of those into which God breathed life.

“Love is the breath of God.” I thought.  Those words encompass my daily journey to pursue my peace and happiness, harmony with my fellow human beings despite their circumstances or situations. As my favorite song says, “When I breathe in, I breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I breathe out love.”

Box up your crap. Part One: The Spirit Self

happy box

happy box (clipped to polyvore.com)

There are a lot of people doing what they need or have to do to get by in this world. They often sacrifice who they are in order to keep the peace, to meet the status quo, to maintain a balance no matter how precarious that may be in unhealthy emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or even physical realms. The lamentations of their despair become a litany of unresolved, unrecognized, and unheeded personal warnings. They have compromised more than they should have when faced with difficulties that, at the time, seemed insurmountable.

It may seem like one just can’t catch a break. Everything such as family issues, occupational hazards like co-workers or bosses, neighbors that fight at 2AM, they all seem to pile up around the edges of our minds, creep in until they become so daunting that curling up in a ball is the only way to feel protected. But, as an adult, we know that’s not responsible towards fulfilling our own needs, wants, desires, or beliefs.

What is required to stabilize the influx of either permitted or illicit chaos in our lives? It’s your Happy Room.

Imagine standing in the middle of a room. It can be any color with as many or as few of windows as you desire. There is a shifting floor and an infinite ceiling. Each wall of this room has shelves from the floor on up to as high as you can reach and beyond. Each wall represents different aspects of our lives, each shelf dictates the significance we place on those aspects. On the many shelves are boxes made of all types of materials such as wood, cardboard, concrete, tissue paper, etc. In those boxes are everything you’ve ever learned, thought of, forgotten, seen, heard, felt, dealt with, avoided but acknowledged, believed, discarded, been, and done.

The wall to your left is filled with the MUST things like paying bills, feeding yourself, going to work. The basic essentials. (To be expanded later) The wall in front of you is filled with RELATIONSHIPS. Every one you’ve ever had; The good, the bad, and the mediums. The wall to your right is filled with TEMPORARY issues. Nearly running out of gas, having to run to the store, remembering the kid’s field trip money, things that although are important when occurring don’t have a dominant impact because of their transience. Behind you is, of course, your PAST. Anything before this moment is there. The floor is constantly shifting with the emotions that can sometimes bog down the spirit or uplift the Divinity within. Looking up, the ceiling is infinite with possibilities, goals, and dreams.

In the middle of this room stands your Spirit Self. The quintessential you that’s filled with, sometimes, an innate Divinity begging to be discovered and experienced. It is the part of you that begs for you to follow your Personal Best path by embracing everything that you can be. It’s the part of you that sometimes gets neglected because the boxes on the surrounding walls fall off the shelves and distract you from following your path. This is the essence of who YOU actually are and what orchestrates how you deal with and work through situations.

When we live our lives, we have all the information we need to deal with whatever situation we’re currently facing. It could be something as simple as when to go to the store, or as complex as death of a loved one, or as mundane as how to meet that seemingly impossible deadline. Regardless of what issues we are dealing with, our Spirit Self knows what to do if we’d only listen and trust that to be true.

Everything you’ve experienced has shown you how to do THIS. Whatever IT is, you already have the tools to handle it. But, sometimes our tools get broken or we don’t value the lessons we’re learning. It’s easy to throw up the hands while declaring, “I don’t know what to do!” Those are the times, in my personal experience, that we do actually know what to do but it may require confrontation, a difficult decision, or a letting go of the past. Distasteful difficulties that pop onto the radar with a sharp bang that indicates another box falling from the shelves. They could be from any of the walls or a combination of them, but whatever it is, the floor of emotions rises up and our Spirit Self has to figure out how to coordinate efforts.

Think of what makes the floor rise with happiness under and throughout your Spirit Self. If you could do ANYthing right now and get paid to do what you love, what would you do? If that’s too difficult, go with what you wanted to be when you grew up. Start there then expand your ideas like a snowball. Lists are helpful to find the common thread between what you wanted to be and what you became.

I always wanted to be a writer. My mother used to read to my brother and me aloud. No matter if it were the newspaper, her college books or papers, stories, she read. Because of that, I don’t ever remember not being able to read or write (except cursive, I remember learning that.) The places she’d take us when she’d tell us stories fascinated me. When I got old enough to understand fact vs. fiction, the world exploded with possibilities. I decided that I wanted to write stories. I wanted to hold the moniker of Author. But life happened and although I piddled around with this or that, I didn’t do it.

February of 2013, I broke my foot. I was unable to keep the job I’d gotten in December. It was not a good point for me on so many levels. But, as if by a magical force, my Spirit Self said, now you have time to do what you wanted to do all along. Take advantage of it. I had time to get involved in my community, which I love to do. I had time to write articles, stories, and to begin a blog. With each word I put down on paper or here, I’ve found myself filling my Spirit Self with the destiny I dreamed about since I was a young girl.

You remember too. If you listen to your Spirit Self and tune in to your personal happiness, you’ll hear it calling you. It may be just a whisper for having been neglected, but it is there. It is waiting. It is willing to give to you. It wants you to remember your Spirit Self title and discover an entirely wonderful new world exactly where you are right now.

It does sound farfetched. It may seem like there isn’t enough time in the day to devote to “discovering yourself.” But truly, the gifts you hold inside of you, the wonders of your unique perspective, your personal voice expanding into Spiritual practice via acts of happiness changes perspectives, clarifies the muddy waters of emotions, and guides you back to the lighted path of your Spiritual Self’s personal Divinity.