WHAT MATTERS MOST From this sixty year old perspective I sometimes look wistfully back on what feel like a whole lot of lost opportunities. It feels as if there were so many wasted years in which I was lost in my own limiting story. I lived years with a closed, protected heart. I always felt like I was here on this planet to serve and to make a difference. But I was too fearful, too cut off, to hidden to really be effective. There was an internal battle being waged between what was seeking expression within me and how willing or capable I was to be seen and heard and really felt. And so I hid. I medicated in countless ways, pretended, defended, and played small while

MY UNDOING In an age of internet and social media, the ability to join energies and co-create experience is profound. And it could well be my undoing. With an increasing barrage of information and energy, it is a full-time job to stay awake and present. Chaotic forces are blurring the mind and shuttering the heart. This is happening at the macro level and has a direct effect within every living micro-being. As dualistic humans, we have an equal opportunity to generate either darkness or light. We are receivers and transmitters both. Everything in manifest creation is energy, and so energy is always moving and being transformed. This can happen as darkness being transformed to Light, and it also happens as Light being drawn to darkness. The current

LET IT GO? The Academy Award winning song from the movie Frozen is looping through my consciousness today. While its singer Idina Menzel is one of my favorites I never saw the movie nor do I have a recording of the song Let It Go. And yet it is informing my inner environment today, and so I embrace that it is in some way a message meant for me. Or is it? To think in terms of trying to let something go indeed freezes me. It just isn’t a helpful admonition for me personally. It invokes a bit of the dear-in-headlights dynamic. Whenever my mind goes to the concept of letting go I immediately feel an increased level of stress regarding whatever the current stimulus is. Seeking

ODE TO MR. STILLINGS As much as social media can sometimes be off-putting it is also frequently a valuable source of information. Such was the case this week when I happened to see an obituary posted for my high school choral director Mr. Stillings. I am fully aware of his first name and yet forty-two years after graduation it still doesn’t feel seemly to use it in reference to him. He is still and always my teacher and one of my first mentors; my Mr. Stillings. I began singing at an early age and had already recorded a gospel album by the time I was fifteen. When I got into high school I was a pre-college arts major, heavily involved in the schools vocal music programs. Though