Archive for December, 2011

Love is All That is Within Me

My sweetie and I are just back from our fun-in-the-sun Christmas beach vacation.

Our five days of toes dipped in sand, fresh seafood and Atlantic sunrises filled us to overflow with gratitude and delight.  We arrived home last night wrapped in bubbles of peace.

Have you ever experienced that super-cool feeling of complete inside-out peace?  I’m pretty excited that on this 29th day of December, my personal 2011 is easing–not hurtling–toward completion.  For me, the year is not expiring in a big blob of trauma drama, as it has in the past.  Instead, I’m blessed that these remaining days are alive with love.

Love is All That is Within Me.

My prayerful wish for you is the same.

I know that we each have the ability to let go of anything that doesn’t serve our highest good.  A wise man on the beach taught me a simple surrender process (more to come on both the man and the process) that allows me to control not only how I choose to feel but also how I share those feelings.

We each have the ability to choose love in any circumstance.

You too can say,  Love is All That is Within Me.

Choosing love takes preparation.  I began to prepare on Christmas Eve by focusing on a simultaneous new birth within me as a part of the Christmas story.

I prayed this simple prayer, “Dear God, may Christmas Day be the first of all days that I live with conscious poise.  May I focus on honoring God-thoughts and forgive myself those thoughts that are less than honorable.  May my growth be deliberate and authentic and focused on love.  Thank you, God.  Amen.”

When I woke on Christmas morning, in my bed perfectly positioned to view the colorful palette of a breathtaking sunrise, I knew I was different.  I felt a sense of mindful connection and today, four days later, I remain plugged in to love and peace.

The probability is high that God and I can take this sense of mindful ease into the first hours, and perhaps days, of 2012.

With All That is Within Me, I make that my intention.

There will be no resolutions and no goal-setting for 2012.  Instead, I resolve to be as fully present to each day as I can knowing that how I approach my day is a conscious decision.

If you’ve chosen that Love is All That is Within You, I’d love to hear about your preparation process and about your intentional resolve.  Please leave a comment here.

In this, my last B Here Today post of 2011, I leave you with a gift and a promise:

My gift to you is a new and improved B Here Today, a 2.0 version, if you will.  The re-tooling is underway and will unveil in mid to late January.

My promise is to lovingly devote more peace, passion and presence to you in the new year.  I read recently that discipline + passion = magic.  2012 will be our year to make magic happen together.  

Until then, my mindful friends, B WELL and B LOVE.

BIG Holiday Hugs!

How Do You Color Your World?

I read some pretty incredible stuff each morning.

The writers of this morning’s serving of reflective readings all seemed to have entered my thought stream before sending their words to me.

Or as a dear friend says, “they’ve been reading my mail again!”

Alex Blackwell, a fellow blogger who’s work I thoroughly admire, describes how, “like a box of 64 Crayola Crayons, the year was colored with bright, happy colors and with somber, unfamiliar ones, too.” (http://thebridgemaker.com)

And on The Daily Love, Robin Lee suggests we ask ourselves this question, “If I believed my presence in life really mattered, would I show up and express myself differently in my life?” (http://thedailylove.com)

Both Alex and Robin address issues that capture my attention because the end of the year is a time when I usually inventory the past 12 months to determine where and how I can improve in the coming 12 months.

Alex writes about the process of acceptance and surrender that must occur if we are to weather the highs and lows of daily living.

He believes, as I do, that while the bright colors of life create our fun and excitement, it is the duller colors that determine how we show up in life and this is where Robin’s question comes into play.

In order to address the second half of her question, I need to truly believe that my individual contributions to life really matter. I need to understand that the sum of the whole would be less without my presence.

Do I believe?

Do you?

To go back to Alex’s 64-count box of colors, do you consider yourself a part of the grand palette? It’s okay for your hue to change with your circumstances, but please know that there is always a place for your within the box.

How will I then show up and color our world?

That’s a question that may take some time to answer; I know it will for me. As we go through this season of joyous holiday celebrations, I encourage you to take an assessment of how you’ve colored your 2011 and how you will strive to paint your 2012.

Go gently and easily. Let your interactions with others be filled with grace. And believe within the heart of Christmas, that love is all there is.

P.S.  Mindful Monday will be vacationing on the Southeastern Florida beaches on Christmas Day and wishes you an incredible Mindful Christmas!

B Mindful of Home

Home for the holidays is much more than a carol at Christmas, a fact for which I am abundantly grateful.

In 2009, the first holiday I lived away from Missouri, my mom sang, “I’ll be home for Christmas” to me as she anticipated my arrival.

A scant seven months later she left for her heavenly home.

The Christmas of 2010 was filled with family memories too painful to dwell on so I sort of skipped it and ran to the southeast Florida beaches.

This Christmas, with my heart strengthening, my sweetie and I just returned from a visit with Dad in his new abode.  He’s lived in his new place–filled with masculine touches (thanks to my brother and sister-in-law)–for about a month, following the sale of our family home.

We had some 45 years of holiday merriment in that house, the house we called home.

During this past weekend, one week before Christmas, there were no signs of the holiday at my Dad’s place, my new home when I visit him in Missouri.

The absence of festive adornments didn’t really matter because Dad lives there.  He is the common denominator in both addresses.  He and Mom gifted me with the magic of Christmas long ago and I’m learning that the holiday feeling doesn’t derive from a location or a brightly wrapped package.

Christmas magic of home resides in my heart.  All the years of waiting in child-like anticipation for “Santa” to get everything just right before my brother and I could run down the hall, all those feasts and all the year-after-year repeated phrases and stories, these all are sweetly tucked into my heart’s nooks and crannies.

I’ll spend some time on Christmas day expressing gratitude for Christmases past as my sweetie and I relax on sand instead of snow.

I can go many places in my mind and this year at Christmas I’ll be mindful of home.  Then I’ll realize that I am home–wherever I am.

In this week before Christmas, please enjoy these five quotes about being home around Christmas.  Also, please leave a comment about how you are mindful of your holiday home.

Peace and blessings to you . . .

I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams. ~ Kim Gannon, Walter Kent and Buck Ram.

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.  ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  ~Charles Dickens

At Christmas, all roads lead home. ~ Marjorie Holmes

Christmas … is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.  ~ Freya Stark

 

Time Travel for the Holidays

I think I found the antidote, or at least a temporary fix, for being restless, irritable and discontented.

As with everything, getting out of myself is the ticket.  Last weekend, I decided to kick my bah-humbug attitude to the curb and head on over to one of Dallas’ hidden treasures.

Right outside downtown–literally across the interstate–is Dallas Heritage Village, a hamlet of buildings restored from the mid- to late-1800s and meant to show a close representation of what life in north Texas was like in that time period.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of Candlelight at Heritage Village, a time when the village is be-decked in Christmas finery and people in period costume stroll the grounds (occasionally breaking out in spontaneous holiday merriment).

The hours were good for my soul, especially the hayride around the village guided by a 1947 John Deere tractor (we opted for motorized over the slower moving Nip and Tuck, the village’s resident donkeys.  At least in a cart I don’t run the risk of sliding in dropped donkey doo.

Taking a step back in time, stopping to listen and observe while wandering about the candlelit town, brought a sense of peace to me.

God knows we can all use a little peace and quiet time, even if we have to go back a century or two to find it.

I must admit that the evening did create a bit of nostalgia for an old semi-regular Christmas tradition; that of spending an evening in the chilly hollers (an old hillbilly term meaning valleys) of Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO.

Nestled in the hills of the Ozark Mountains, this larger village houses an army of artisans who not only take over residency in the shops, but demonstrate their trades (like glass-blowing or candy-making) while children of all ages–yours truly among them in the not-so-distant past–watch in wonder and amazement.

I miss the scents of those Midwestern holiday nights, the air tinged with wassail and wood burning fires.  There are many things I miss during this time of year but part of the joy of memories is having them bound back when new experiences elicit reminders.

It’s nice to do a mental time trek, especially during the holidays.  Making new memories is nice too, but next time I’d love to find wassail at Dallas Heritage Village.  Just saying’ . . .

Wishing you days of peace during the holiday season.  Be good to yourself while you’re being good to others.

photo of Nip and Tuck courtesy of the Dallas Heritage Village blog site

Mindful Squared

The subject of mindfulness has been, well, on my mind, more so than usual.

I just signed the dotted line to work with a website designer to transform B Here Today into a soft landing place for helping you create a deeper sense of your own purpose and mindfulness.  My designer is encouraging me to really set a laser beam on my intentions for the site’s content and what I want to offer you.

I want to offer you tools for creating presence and peace and to help you answer the question: How do you stay present to the moments in your day when life seems like a perpetual whirlwind? I want us to share thoughts about living from the heart and about experiencing being where we are today and every day.

I’m also thinking a lot too of my cyber friend Tom Catton, author of The Mindful Addict (reviewed in last Thursday’s post).  I’ve chosen this week’s Mindful Monday quotes with Tom in mind; each of them is from his book.  Let me know what you think and how you find them useful.  And if you’re inclined, pick up a copy of Tom’s book at Amazon.com or bn.com.

As you move through your week, please give mindful consideration to these quotes one per work day or all of them each day.  The latter is what I’ll do as I do my best to “practice what I preach.”

B Well & Mindful, dear friends,

Beth

From Tom Catton’s The Mindful Addict:

I was learning the discipline of being quiet.  Doing a meditation before the day started was like greeting the day as it gave birth to the light.

There are no coincidences in life.  But there are miracles we can all experience and connect with when we are fully awake, mindful of life in the moment, and unafraid to follow our hearts.  They only ask of us our presence, an acknowledgment and our attention paid in full.

I define sanity as living in a place of love, living in the present moment.  Insanity occurs when we are living in fear and separation.

We must surrender to change or we become stagnant; we become complacent.  We become robots, simply going through the motions of life.  Complacency is a lazy, tired form of fear.

This is the principle of equanimity in action:  Move through our lives without labeling everything “good” or “bad.”  Life just is.  There will be challenges.  By grace, we stay on the path and then find ourselves looking at life with more compassion.