Archive for June, 2011

Thoughts Are Choices, Not Decisions

I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I choose my thoughts.  The process for me has two parts:  1) Be present to the thought I have chosen, and 2) Determine the placement of the thought.

The first is fairly self-explanatory but what do I mean by the second?  If I am present and fully appreciative of the thought, I then get to “place” the thought which is another way of describing setting an intention.  (the picture below is an actualized intention–beautiful, isn’t it?)

When it comes to thoughts and intentions, I have to ask myself a couple of questions:  Do I align my thought with other thoughts of abundance and joy or am I aligning it with thoughts of worry and fear?  Am I sailing through my day expecting my thoughts to produce incredible results or am I moving through my days regretting past thoughts and effectively disregarding the present thought?

Here’s what I know to be truth:  The maximum value of a thought occurs when it is grounded in the present.

Intentionally going back to Intention

A few days ago, after pondering this post about placing my thoughts, these words from The Daily Word struck me:  “I set an intention to be motivated by love, kindness and generosity–rather than by fear, judgment or obligation.”

Well now.  Isn’t that coincidentally cool?  (wink, wink) Some would say I visualized that Word entry into being by focusing on placing my thoughts, by setting an intention.

Is it true?  Can I live by that intention today?  Can I truly decide to let love, kindness and generosity be my guideposts?  Really?  In spite of weariness, physical pain and the stress of a hectic day?  In spite of others’ getting in my way?  In spite of things happening that are outside my control?

Maybe it’s “because of” instead of ”in spite of . . . “

The only way I know how to fulfill the intention is to embrace each moment, to stay completely focused on here and now.  Because I may be weary, in pain or completely stressed out.

Fear, judgment and obligation sneak onto my path when I have veared off into the past or the future.  My thoughts turn ugly, as evidenced by a clipped tone, impatient or bossy voice or, my personal favorite, sarcasm.

I do sarcasm so well.

My thoughts are choices, not decisions

When I remain rooted in the present, I can be aware of less-than-loving kinds of responses and focus on my choices of thought.  I can see when my behavior is turning away from being loving, kind and generous.  In spite of my holiness–and I believe we are all holy beings made in the image and likeness of our Creator–humanity is my reality.  Holiness of spirit may be my truth but, hey, walking on water is not yet my thing.

Sometimes my humanity is left out in the sun a little too long and becomes spoiled, even rotten.  And yet I still want to play with it.  Yuck.  There is nothing like a little spoiled humanity to muck up my day and everyone else’s whose path I cross.

One of my solutions to errant acts and feelings of humanity is to create chunks of time away from other members of humanity.  Moving away doesn’t mean I’m leaving the path; it just means I’ve chosen to step away to re-charge or refresh my humanity reservoir.  I figure if hanging out alone is good enough for Jesus . . .

Cherish alone time

How do you feel about alone time?  Do you find yourself filling the voided silence with noise or flurious (yes I just combined flurry and furious) activity?

Or do you cherish and embrace your solitary moments and allow them to feed your soul?

I encourage you to be where you are today, front-and-center of each individual thought that crosses the threshold of today’s 1,440 minutes.  I can think of no better way to experience grace.

Introducing: Mindful Monday

I’m pretty excited to offer, beginning today, a weekly Mindful Monday blog post for my BHT readers.

MM is an inspirational writing and photo to help you open a channel for love, peace and joy to flow throughout your week.  I know you usually have a ton of stuff to do on Monday mornings, but please take a moment to ground yourself.  I promise Mindful Monday will be a short read so think of it as setting the tone for your week.  Let me know what you think and . . . Enjoy! (note: this was scheduled to depart my cloud early Monday morning, but thanks to operator error, is leaving mid-day–room for improvement is always good!)

I’m still thinking about the principle of Intention. Regular readers will recall that Intention is one of my power words for 2011. (see my January 11 post: http://www.bheretoday.com/2011/01/11/while-most-peoples-resolutions-wane-three-words-live/)

It occurs to me that setting a deliberate spiritual intention accomplishes little if not followed by a belief that a path will be provided.  In fact, the path offers the perfect melding of Intention with my other two words for 2011:  Source and Order.

Source is the way of orderly direction, or “demonstration,” to use an old-fashioned term.  A demonstration cannot not work so long as the focus stays squarely on the intention.

What we think about we bring about, or as within, so without.The Rev. Ed Townley, who writes Spirit Expressing  (http://www.spiritexpressing.org/), says he thanks God and acknowledges the joyful good in his life.  The critical follow-up step, however, is to allow the good to express, and to believe it is good.

Are you demonstrating your good today and do you believe it IS good?

Baseball and Joplin

You can thank the 1985 World Series, known as the I-70 Series, for this post.

Baseball aficionados will remember that the Kansas City Royals bested the St. Louis Cardinals in the seventh and final game of the match-up.  For those unfamiliar with God’s game, having two teams from the same state play each other for the penultimate title in major league baseball is hysterically cool. 

For anyone unfamiliar with Missouri geography, a ribbon of interstate connects the two cities from west to east with roughly 200 miles in between.  It’s a sibling rivalry made more contentious because these two metropolitan areas are decidedly different in just about every way. 

Anyway, I went to Game Six that year, and watched as the World Series win not only cemented the Royals as the best team for that year, but also saw the birth of the annual mid-June tradition of recreating the I-70 Series during interleague play.

This year’s heated battle is more special than usual.  

You see, both ball clubs, along with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are united for a cause bigger than baseball:  helping in relief efforts for the victims and survivors of the May 22 EF5 (the deadliest) tornado that slammed through Joplin, MO.

The EF5 tornado numbers for this southwestern Missouri city of less than 43,000 are staggering:

• 200 MPH winds, difficult to survive without the protection of an underground basement.
• 6,953 homes and 800 businesses were completely destroyed.
• 6 schools were destroyed - 2 High Schools, 2 Middle Schools and 2 Elementary Schools.
• 141 people were killed; 1,300 were injured; 750 hospitalized; and 500 in shelters.
• The estimated cost to rebuild Joplin is $1.9-$3 billion.

The Joplin tornado is considered to be the most deadly in modern record-keeping dating back to 1950 by the National Weather Service.

It is second only in the service’s records of an 1840 tornado in Natchez, Miss., when 317 people died on May 6. 

Dire health-related conditions

Now there are reports surfacing of additional deaths as tornado victims succumb to a nasty fungus called Zygomycosis which develops when soil or vegetative material becomes embedded under the skin.

“This fungus invades the underlying tissue and actually invades the underlying blood vessels and cuts off the circulation to the skin,” Dr. Uwe Schmidt, an infectious disease specialist at Freeman Health System in Joplin, told the Huffington Post.

So, please, keep praying for the good folks of Joplin, as well as for the hundreds of clean-up workers.

So much more than baseball

More than my love for baseball is love for my home state of Missouri.  I lived there 48 years of my life and there are two very special people living in Joplin who have not only been a part of my life for 44 of those 48 years, they played a significant role in my getting sober 20 years ago.

To say I love them is a grand understatement, as is saying I’m intensely relieved that they are, at least physically and materially, unharmed.  I can’t begin to imagine the everlasting damage to their psyches, however.

In the passing of our days, when we find ourselves taking what is right in front of us for granted, please pause, really look, really feel a connection with what you’re doing and with where you are because when we forget to be where we are today, we may just feel a sense of regret should it be quickly be ripped from us.

If a Teacher Appears, Will the Student Be Ready?

If we’re honest, the answer to the headline question is, “Yes. Uh, no. Well, I don’t know, maybe.”

How can we know when a teacher will appear?  I’m learning that teachers pop up all around me every day.  I tend to know I’m ready by the response I give to teachable moments like these:

• You head out the door–late–to a job interview or an important meeting.  The car batter is dead.
• You travel out of town for business only to discover when you arrive at your hotel that you forgot the shoes that go with your suit.
• The dog whizzes on the carpet right before company arrives.
• You have all the fixings for a favorite cake recipe and realize you’re out of eggs.

How long did it take you to realize that a teacher had appeared and you weren’t ready?

Can you relate to any or even all of these examples?  The list could go on forever but there is a common theme:  How do you respond?

Do you tend to think “why are all these crappy things happening to me?”

Do you search the heavens looking for ways to figure out how to fix the circumstance?

Do you sit around squawking about how you’ve been wronged?

I used to to a lot of all three, and truth be known, still do from time to time.  But I’ve found a much easier to deal with life on life’s terms.

I slow down.  I appreciate.  I notice.  I contemplate how good my life is.

Let me tell you a true story, about my friend Shannon.

Shannon is a single mom to three adorable children.  She’s an elementary school teacher, and one of the most loving and giving souls you would ever meet. 

Shannon is in her mid-forties.  Right before Christmas last year, after more than a year of steadily increasing back pain and having a hysterectomy, gall bladder removed and an abnormal mammogram.  After many, many tests and many, many doctors, she was diagnosed with metastasis to her thoracic vertebrae.

With the untold friends, her entire family (mom and dad, sister and brother plus their families), Shannon was ready.  She stood tall in front of perhaps one of the greatest teachers we humans can face:  cancer.

Shannon is slowly, but steadily recovering from a stem cell transplant and her prognosis is good.  She wrote in her most recent post from the CaringBridge.org journal site “Just tucked the kids in for the first time in nearly 50 days.”  Can you imagine?  She was quarantined from her children for nearly two months.

My God, what an incredible display of readiness. 

Obviously we know which story we would like to emulate. 

While Shannon’s is far more complicated that the fictional story, and in the range of life occurrences, one of the most glaringly difficult to stand to, in many ways it is just as difficult to face the teacher’s lessons contained within the fictional story.  

Life’s big deals force us to slow down and deal.  But the day-to-day alterations to our routines that create speed bumps in our 24-hour racetrack? How do we stand to those?

We’d like to think we’re spiritually fit enough to be ready when the massive occurs but what about the minimal?  Trust me, it can take you out just as quickly if you’re not spiritually ready.

I invite you to spend tomorrow and the next day and the rest of June observing how you, the student responds when teachers–great and small–appear.  Try not to judge your responses, but use them as exercises in preparedness.

Are you up for the challenge? Send me an email to bheretoday.bethw@gmail.com and let me know how you do. 

In honor of National Cancer Survivors Day, here’s my friend Shannon.  Let’s continue to pray for cures, and the will to STAND.  Shannon, you’re an inspiration and my hero. May God continue to bless you.