Busy busy. The holidays came and went too quickly. t threw up Exorcist style on Christmas Eve in the middle of the night so our Christmas was pretty low key and involved lots of laundry and very little sleep. We've had a fantastic Fall season though, so it wasn't too big a deal. Plus, we were all together, resting by cozy warm heaters. :)

The visiting teaching message put out by the LDS church this month is titled: "Willing to bear one another's burdens." It talks about looking outward, focusing our energy and attention on serving and lifting others. I know this is over-emphasized this time of year, which is great. I just wish we all could carry this "spirit of Christmas" into our daily activities and lives the rest of the year. I can definitely do better with this. Jeffrey R. Holland taught: "Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion and Atonement, I promise you He is not going to turn His back on us now. When He says to the poor in spirit, 'Come unto me,' He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way."

May we all look around us every chance we get and search for ways that we can lighten the load of others. May we look for, cherish and perpetuate goodness, love and charity in the world. May we give our lives and hearts over to God and allow Him to work His many miracles and lessons through each of us.

Happy holidays. Peace, love and om to all. 

I had some revelations and felt some strong "aha" moments when reading A Return to Love again. One thought: we reap what we sow - pretty straight forward right? But Marianne Williamson describes it thus: "What we mentally refuse to permit others, we refuse ourselves. What we bless in others we draw to us" (195). So not only do our negative thoughts stifle our ability to be positive, they stop us from progressing. I love this. 

Another nugget: what you do is not as important as why you do it. Does it speak to your heart? Does it keep you up at night? I'm reminded of standing on stage in front of hundreds of fellow students answering that question after having discussed it with a literary hero of  mine, Terry Tempest Williams. How did I forget? Why must we learn and re-learn the same lessons in our short lives?

Williamson instructs us: "Don't ask God to send you a brilliant career, but rather ask him to show you the brilliance within you" (184). What I do then, how much I make, who I work with or for is not important at all. What is - am I fulfilling potential? Am I becoming great..great by my own standards, when compared only to myself? She goes on to suggest "What a Beethoven, Shakespeare, or Picasso has done is not create something, so much as they have that place within themselves from which they could express that which has been created by God. Their genius then, is actually expression and not creation" (187). What am I doing to tap into my divinity? Am I? 

I feel stifled by my reliance and dependence on technology. I feel silenced and imprisoned in buildings too far from nature. I feel stuck surrounded by strangers and unfamiliar with my own heart. I need some "me" time to soul search and stretch myself spiritually and emotionally. I have a void inside where assurance used to be. Where being whole and on my own wasn't a bad thing. I have a lack. I feel it dripping from my fingertips. So I question everything. I get anxious, then angry, I sleep poorly, I have a bad attitude about it much of the time. Marianne must have felt some of these same things. She reminds me: "A rude attitude is destructive to the fabric of the world"(193). 

I must tread carefully. We must tread carefully. With our words. Our energy. Our anger. Our attention to detail. Our willingness to change and adapt. In our rebellion against that which is wrong.