PRECIOUS ATTENTION There are few gifts as precious in life as someone’s undivided attention. There are few things rarer in life these days as the gift of someone’s undivided attention. The need to be paid attention to is universal and unmistakable. Though we may not frame it as such, it is built into our hardwiring and even into our DNA. We need to be seen, heard, acknowledged, and appreciated. When we are not, we suffer. We need to pay attention to others. We need to see, listen to, acknowledge, and appreciate fellow living beings. When we do not do that, we suffer. We have an intrinsic need to connect. We need to experience a felt-sense connection within our own being to ourselves and to our surrounding world.

THE SACRAMENT OF IRRITATION People can be really irritating. And thus, my mirrors for awakening. May I most humbly share with you that in my meditation chair I am an enlightened master? Well, when things are quiet, and the temperature is pleasant, and the circumstances meet my meditation requirements. Awe, the enlightened state. And then the neighbor throws multiple items into the recycle bin just outside my bedroom window. And then my husband loudly sneezes or answers his phone or bangs a few pots, pans, dishes. People can be really irritating. Okay. I can get really irritated. That is much more to the point. Irritation is a form of discomfort and human beings do not like discomfort. While the degree to which we avoid, and resist discomfort

HER NAME WAS LOLA I am slowly moving into yet another goodbye. I have experienced goodbye enough times to be very clear that they are not about absence. They are about presence. I have also said goodbye enough times to know that love is never past tense. My father transitioned in 1982 and I love him more today than I did then and more than I did last year. I am quite certain that for as long as I am on this planet the love will continue to grow, deepen, and mature. The same is true of Jean. I am calling her Jean in this writing because that indeed was her given name. I am calling her Jean so that anyone who knew her will recognize the

REDEEMING THE IN-BETWEEN I am here to redeem the in-between in 2019. Be careful what you pray for. Though I have never much cared for that former later statement I must admit that sometimes it feels true. I have for many years selected a theme to guide me through my calendar years. I do so by praying into my Highest Self and by seeking to align with what is seeking to know itself in me. I have become better and better at recognizing the orchestration that ensues from my affirmative theme. This is one of the reasons I am absolutely sure that the Universe is always listening and always responding to what we align and open to. I know that I know that I am always being

NO ADDITIVES For decades I believed that if I found the right book, teaching, or belief system my suffering would end, and I would be free. It came as a great shock when I had the realization that freedom was not the result of what was added to what I believed was missing. Freedom comes when you realize that the spiritual journey is not an adventure in adding to. Spiritual freedom is the life-long process of releasing and of taking away. Let me reframe that slightly. Spiritual freedom is the life-long process of having what is extraneous taken away from you. The illustration of Michelangelo’s David comes to mind. When asked how he could possibly sculpt something so perfect out of a raw block of marble the

DISAGREEING AND BECOMING MORE These are historical, monumental times we are living in. What has been submerged for centuries is arising to be seen. What has yet to be integrated psychologically and spiritually is ripe for transformation. And until each and everyone of us is willing to own our part in this unfolding the likelihood is that even more chaotic times are ahead of us. I am here to serve and to minister to all people. In these days of social media and ideological identification it can be challenging indeed. I do not often directly share when I stand politically. That doesn’t mean I don’t have positions or values by which I operate. I do indeed. I will not, however, allow my own persuasions to overshadow my

THE BEST OF TIMES “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” It is the best of times, and in some ways, it is the worst of times. As I begin to ponder what has occurred during the calendar year of 2019, this Dickens quote from A Tale of Two Cities springs forward. It has never felt truer or more integrated for me. What I find so astounding about these two seeming opposites is that they are perfectly co-existing within my heart. I don’t even feel them as opposites. It feels like a dance that is happening in my conceptual mind, a way to attempt to categorize the radical nature of many of the things that have happened throughout this year. For someone