Mary Christmas

       I love Christmas.  I love the lights, the decorations, the holiday cheerfulness – strangers greeting each other with smiles and good wishes.  I especially enjoy the anticipation and experience of gift giving, that tangible expression of love – even when it goes overboard a bit.  There's a generosity here that reminds me of something larger.

       For me, Christmas celebrates the birth of Love, the first word in the vocabulary of God.  Christmas translates Love into human terms.  The life and teaching of Jesus brought to us the revolutionary truth that we are not separate – not separate from God, not separate from each other, not separate from anything in the universe.  All is one in the extravagant energy of Love. 

       Each year, Christmas reminds us to bring forth into everyday life the spirit of Jesus, a spirit of generosity and consciousness of oneness.  Christmas invites us to give birth to Love – as Mary did. 

       Yes, we're invited to be merry.   We're also invited to be Mary.

       I wish you joy, love and every blessing!

Bask and Blaze

       A ribbon of orange along the southeast horizon peeks through the trees and into the bedroom window signaling sunrise soon.  After yesterday's blizzard, the sky looks clear and the Fahrenheit gauge on the deck reads 10 below.  A good time, I think, to practice bask and blaze, a meditation technique we played with last Thursday night in group. 

       We start by receiving – softening and opening to the sunshine of the universe.  Focusing on the in-breath, we draw the radiant energy of Love into every cell, gently stretching our capacity for fullness, letting our hearts smile as we bask in radiance.

       After a while – no hurry – we invite our attention to the divine spark at the center of the heart.  Nurturing that spark with the in-breath, we notice how it grows naturally – from spark, to flame, to blaze, to roaring blaze.

       Quietly sitting, attending now to the out-breath, we blaze extravagantly, joyfully radiating warmth and light.

       By basking and blazing, we enter the flow of radiance that is the universe.  Loved and Love, we practice our true nature:

       Suns of God.

Dance

From ego's perspective,

Relationship is risk.

Make friends with fear.

Relate anyway.

From soul's vantage,

Relationship just is.

Enjoy who you are.

Relate any way.

Ego and soul dance

Awkwardly – so what.

Dance anyway.

Dance any way.

Awkward, too,

You and I,

Awkward two

Dancing our way.