Month: November 2017

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Direction

Oh God, I want to hear from You every day, and I want that for direction.

 

You think it’s wrong to want Direction? Wrong to ask for My guidance and leading? Wrong to want to stay on course, choose wisely? Make wise decisions? You feel bad about wanting that?

I guess I was taught that, that I am, that we are on our own. That we “graduate” beyond having You lead us, having You confirm for us.

Let Me get this straight. So the reward of a faith-commitment is, after a brief honeymoon period, to live separated, estranged, while proving your love and faithfulness by not wavering in your commitment. What kind of marriage is that? What kind of husband would I be, demanding that? I will tell you what kind—an abusive husband. A neurotic husband. No, I Am a faithful Husband, a faithful Father, a faithful Brother, a faithful Friend. The longing you have I put there. I want this more than you do. Mark this down:

More than you want to be right on time, I want this for you.

More than you want wildlife encounters, I want them for you.

More than you want magnificent light, I want that light for you.

More than you want stories to share, I want to share My stories with and through you.

More than you want increased creative flow in your life, I want increased creative flow in your life.

More than you want your legs healed and strong, I want your legs healed and strong.

More than you want to explore My beautiful world, I want to show you My beautiful world.

There is nothing you want that I don’t want more for you, want more to give to you.

All you need to do is prepare to receive. Not earn, not labor, not work harder, not prove yourself worthy. Receive.

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Into the Quiet

It’s Quiet. I mean, very. Lord, what would You say?

What would you say?

Huh?

What would you pour into this safe, round container of Quiet? If you could say anything?

Gosh, it is beautiful, this Quiet. So honestly I wouldn’t want to mar it with any complaint, anything negative. Just gratitude and praise. Just, praise You, bless You, thank You.

I’m telling you, you have a free pass—you can vent—you can say whatever you need or want to…and you are choosing praise? Gratitude? Why?

Because…because I love You, Lord. Because my heart is full of praise, full of gratitude. Because only that seems fitting to pour into this round Quiet. Lord, I’m seeing blown glass, rather the action of glass-blowing, creating a beautiful glass ball. Is this what the Quiet is like? Easily shattered?

What makes glass special is its transparency. It also makes glass vulnerable. It is the fire, the breath, and the water that take the elements of earth and shape them into a container, a vessel, of such exquisite beauty. My fire, breath, and water have made you a beautiful, transparent vessel. Yet you feel vulnerable to the least pressure as if you are in danger of imploding any minute.

Aren’t I?

No. Some glass balls hang high on the tree, way out of reach, but that’s not you. You are more like the Japanese fishing balls that help secure the net—amazingly resilient even in storms, yet still beautiful and unexpected. You, your life, is a surprise! You were, to your parents. You were and are to Pete. And you are, to your world. You have let Me fill you and heal you over and over, and you’ve done it again.

Thank You, Lord. It’s Your Promise, too, I see that. I can feel that.

 

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Seek and Find

Lord, what would You say? You speak to my artist friend in drawings. You speak to me in nature, in patterns of light and shadow, and in words I hear in my heart.

Don’t ever stop searching. Those who seek, find. Those who search for Me with their whole heart, find Me. Search for Me everywhere and you will find Me, everywhere waiting. Search for Me in one small narrow corner of the vast universe, and that is where you will find Me, but that is not only where I Am. Truly I Am Everywhere-Present, all the time calling and speaking to you.

What you are experiencing is expansion of experience. You are shattering gates and knocking down walls to My Presence in your life. You are letting Me rush in like a flood, like a Mighty Wind. You are letting Me flood your soul and your life with Light. You are expanding your territory when you expand the boundaries you have put on My Presence.

I Am not playing Hide and Seek with you, not as you think—rather, I Am Hiding in Plain Sight, just waiting for your least glance, your least nod, to notice My Presence. Then you will hear Me plainly say, Here I Am, Here Have I Been All Along, Here Will I Be, in all your tomorrows.

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Clarity

Lord, I feel like we have both become discouraged, and discouragement is obscuring. Like, like the dangerous aspect of fog.

You need clarity. There is a reason you de-fog your lens. Too much fog and you can’t focus on anything. Then fog becomes like Silence. You don’t want to be deaf or blind. You want to be clear—clear eyes, clear heart, like clear water. You want to reflect Me and My heart through your life.

Oh, God, the Seat of Seeing I want to sit in is Yours. And the One I want to walk the beach with and listen to is You. And if I take myself on a guided meditation and walk a path through the forest and over the footbridge and into the clearing, the One I want to find there is You. Yes, I’d love talking animals and birds to accompany me, of course! Like Narnia! But as Lucy said, it’s You, Alsan. It’s You.

I Am always with you. I will never leave you. Even when you don’t know what to do, what to say, where to go, where to be, I AM. And I AM by your side, and I Am within you. I fill all things—for you that means I fill all circumstances, all situations, with My Holy Presence. Let Me fill your mind, your thoughts. Let Me fill your body with health and strength. Let Me fill your days and your nights. Let Me fill all things in your life with Myself. Let Me be the air you breathe that sustains you moment by moment. Let My Spirit flow through your body like oxygen-rich blood, energizing and inspiring every part of you. You sing praise. You sing hallelujah—not because I need to hear it, but because it is healing for your soul to remember the Song. Fill yourself with Who I Am. Glow—Sing—Blaze. Stand—Walk—Run—Fly—Soar. Lift yourself up as you lift My Name up in praise and thanksgiving. That is the key for you—sing praise.

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Loss

Loss is hard, no matter how I think about it. I have friends going through it, right now.

The portal you call death is a lot like jumping to hyperspace, or going to warp speed—all of a sudden, the essence of the person is too large, too fast, and holds too much energy for the physical body that has been its home. The soul jumps to Eternity, leaving behind the empty shell. In this eternity there is no separation, not from Me and not from anyone loved in this life. In fact, since Love is the core of Being, the soul actually experiences unity with everyone and everything, while still retaining individuality. This is a mystery beyond your comprehension. You see glimpses and hints, nothing more.

Lord, the Old Testament warned against trying to connect with anyone who had died, so that warning makes me, I am sure makes a lot of us, wary. Yet some days I would like nothing more than a conversation with my Mom or Dad, or Patrick. That is why those dreams about them are so precious.

What the Old Testament warned about was substituting that contact for a genuine connection to Me. In Me and through Me and through the power of My resurrection, you have access to anyone for all of history. Who do you think sends you those comforting dreams? Who do you think summons the blue butterfly or the pileated woodpecker, just when you need some reassurance?

I gave you these earthly relationships to be an eternal blessing to you. I don’t intend you to remain in grief over the loss of physical contact. Instead, try asking Me to arrange experiences where you know your loved one has communicated with you, in a way personal and private to you, and see what happens?

Lord, I will never forget driving home after Christmas 2000, when Daddy died Christmas day, and the smell of his pipe tobacco that he got every Christmas in my childhood filled the car out of nowhere.

Not out of nowhere, out of Beyond. Out of Eternity. No, your father is not smoking a pipe in heaven! But that experience—what did it do for you?

I felt as if he was somehow near, along with my Aunt who gave him that tobacco, saying that he was okay. That he was well and healthy and somehow aware of me and where I was. It was a powerful moment of connection.

And did it increase or diminish your faith? Did it comfort you or plunge you into depression?

Lord, it increased my faith. And yes, it comforted me too—like the man I had lost to Alzheimer’s was somehow suddenly my Daddy again. Wow, I never put that into words before.

That was the exact intention, My intention, in the experience: to comfort and assure you.

So I can ask that my friends be comforted? And assured?

Indeed, yes. These are prayers I love to answer—happy serendipitous surprises of love.

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Stale

Yesterday we talked about nourishment, about food that nourishes us versus food that doesn’t. What about stale? What about good food gone stale?

How does good food go stale? When you don’t eat it fresh. When you put it aside, when you don’t eat it all, or when you make other less-nourishing choices. Life goes stale the same way. The other reason food can go stale or spoil is when you have “too much on your plate,” when you can’t possibly take it all in. That is where you’ve been, with too much to absorb, too much to think about. The body has a way of adjusting to too much pressure and this is how your body is reacting now, wanting sleep and rest and quiet so that it can recover and regroup.  You’ve been trying to fix a long-term issue with a short-term solution–caffeine and sugar–that is actually making you feel worse. And those worse effects are cumulative. You ate healthy all day yesterday and you rested better last night. Try all that again today and assess how you feel tomorrow. That will help your body.

Now for your spirit and your soul. Your spirit has been managing by coming to the Page, by trying to keep fresh and real here, but your emotional self, that is another matter entirely. You haven’t really let yourself feel the pain of losing Mikey, or the upset of both getting and then letting go of the puppy, or the shock of hearing Pete say to you, I can’t get up. You need to let Me comfort you, and hear Me affirm your wisdom in the impulses you had and the choices you made about the puppy, and receive My strength for the days ahead with Pete.

God, don’t I do all that here? At the Page?

No, little one. You do all that outside. Here, you are very conscious of time, your allotment of minutes, and you are often interrupted, which means you can’t allow yourself to open emotionally at the depth you need to, right now. You are afraid of a flood of tears or a volcano of anger, erupting from within you. So you keep to the surface, trying hard to maintain both connection to Me and an outward composure in the world. Meanwhile, much festers and goes unhealed and unresolved deep inside you. So come, meet Me outside again. I know what your schedule is like, through the holidays. But very soon you will have a chance, and when you do, take it! And come prepared to receive.

 

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Nourishment

Now, late in the day, I need a fresh word like fresh bread. I don’t even eat bread anymore, Lord. It’s not good for me, for my system. I’ve given up wheat.

But there are breads you can eat.

Yes, and I am grateful for those.

Part of wisdom is knowing what nourishes you, what are empty calories and what is actually detrimental to your system.

Yes, so…

So what nourishes you and what is detrimental to you is not necessarily the same as it is for someone else. You might have deficiencies others don’t have. You might have a lower tolerance than others do. You might need supplements, or to avoid certain foods altogether.

Think about this spiritually. There is music that draws you closer to Me, and music that doesn’t move you at all. There is a preaching style and there is subject matter that opens your heart, and there are other styles and subjects that close your heart. Isn’t that so?

You know it is.

The key is not to judge yourself or others but to recognize what nourishes and nurtures your soul’s connection to Me. Don’t worry about what others are eating–you choose what is most beneficial to you.

Lord, this page is. Quiet listening is. Music that affirms Your lovingkindness, that does it for me.

Don’t try to fit yourself into last year’s clothes, or last decade’s diet. You gauge the weather and choose your daily wardrobe accordingly. You don’t wear sandals in a snowstorm or your down vest in a heat wave. You carry a raincoat when a squall is in the forecast. If you pay attention, you can be clothed and fed in each day’s unfolding, in both the natural and the spiritual.

 

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Sink A New Well

Lord, what am I finishing up today, and what am I beginning or renewing tomorrow? What unfinished business do I need to tend to?

I have already arranged something greater than you could have imagined. You don’t have to figure out how about anything. Put your considerable intellect at the service of incredible inspiration. That is another way to say, let your heart lead. You have been living way out of balance, trying to analyze everything and stuffing down your feelings and fears. You need to live in heart and vision. What did I ask Jeremiah? “What do you see?” That is My question to you, spiritually and creatively. As a photographer and as a person, Eve, what do you see?

“Open the eyes of my heart” needs to be your prayer. “Renew my vision, Lord,” is the only now-and-tomorrow prayer you need to remember. You are straining to see through walls and around curves. I have Beauty for you right here. Right now. I don’t want you to pre-visualize; that is not your strength or your gift. I want you to react in the moment to what you see and feel. When I say to see with your heart, come back to your feelings. What do you feel? What emotions are prompted by what you see? How can you convey that emotional response visually, using the scene before you? You already know connection is a keyword with birds and all critters. Ask Me how to receive connecting images in the landscape too—connecting with the land’s voice, or with My Spirit through the landscape, or with the heart of your eventual viewer.

Stop and feel. Let feeling inform your seeing. Allow yourself a wider range of feeling. You might explore feeling frisky, playful, frivolous, mischievous. Think theatrically. Think character and costume and fantasy. Think party and celebration and a good time.

Lord, I keep hearing “playful.”

Yes, I want you to grow younger again. You are not immature but innocent, guileless, trusting, gentle. You are not irresponsible—you are so overly responsible you are literally working and worrying and burdening yourself into an early grave. I have much for you to do, and to see, and to experience and to enjoy—but none of that will happen for you if you continue to drive yourself into the ground. The unfinished business you have today is with you. I want you to unlock the ball and chain you have wrapped around your feet and your hands and your heart. I want you to loose you. I want you to set you free. If I told you that you were totally free, what would you do? Who would you be?

You’ve believed a lie that says you must keep pumping harder when the well is running dry. No, you need to sink a new well.

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Incubation

Dear God, before I jump into “do”—what would You say?

There is much within you, waiting to come forth. Some lies at great depth and some is just below the surface, awaiting only your attention to emerge. Incubation is all about waiting, but purposeful waiting. Waiting in the foreknowledge and assurance that powerful and wonderful changes are already underway and will soon be manifest, be visible. You are incubating now.

Incubation is not passive. A diligent mother turns her eggs, makes sure they are warm and sheltered. A diligent mother feeds herself so that when the babies hatch, she has the energy she needs to take care of both them and her. A diligent mother keeps knowledgeable about her own food sources. You are afraid that paying attention to the stirrings within will somehow harm them. This is a lie. You must heed the stirrings within in order to birth them, and in order to nurture them to their full potential.

Again I say, I did not give you this life to strip it from you How would you live each day differently if I told you that your nesting place would weather any storm and that you are destined for both wondrous migratory journeys and a stable home-base? That your calling is to combine word with image and bring hope and encouragement and healing to the broken-hearted, and encouraging vision to the newly emerging, and a sense of purpose to those seeking direction or lost in confusion? What if I said, beauty is your Bible? That your lens—your view of My world—is the Yes and Amen that I, the True Word, intend and need to speak through you?

Your eggs are hatching asynchronously: word gifts, visual gifts, and music gifts. And you have had earlier seasons of hatching, which you’ve assumed were to be your only times of bringing-forth. No, you have many seasons yet, many incubations to come. For now, pay attention to this season. Quit apologizing for what stirs within you, for those inner longings you keep trying to silence. They are trying to emerge—encourage them! They will soon have wings. Pay attention to every dream, every longing. If it is stirring within you, it is from Me. We are birthing together. Don’t let these become stillborn. Turn your eggs, feed yourself and incubate in joy.

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On The Edge

Lord, why am I fatigued?

 

Seriously? You are asking Me why you are fatigued?

Look in the mirror. Pull back and watch your life as you would watch a movie about someone else. What would you say about the character who is you?

Driven, Lord. I’d say driven. Obsessed, even.

 My word says, Be Still and Know. Not, Be Frantic and Know. You are on the edge of a breakdown and you don’t even see it. You are right at the precipice—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Everyone around you sees it. Who are you trying to prove yourself to? The one with the most stress loses.

 So, Lord, here I am.

And Here I Am. But you have not let Me be I AM, your I Am. You have thought you needed to be I am—and especially for everyone else: I am efficient, I am calm, I am a good friend, I am faithful, I am kind, I am loving, I am creative…and you are all those things. But who, Who, is I AM for you? You ask Me for strength and for wisdom so you can continue to be “I am” for all those people. I want to be I AM for you. You ask Me, what can I do? What can I give? And I keep saying, Receive. Let’s increase the flow in your life. You are trying hard to be the riverbed and the spring. Not out of ego but out of a misplaced sense of duty and obligation, as if you had to prove both your love and your worth. For a little while, the only Believing Mirror I want you to look into is Me, not My Word, which you still interpret through older, poisoned voices, but My Eyes. Let My Eyes become your Believing Mirror. Let Me show you what I see, and what I foresee, what I envision.

First, you don’t generate the power, the electricity, the current—I do. Let Me clean off the terminals, the connections, that have become corroded. My cleansing is gentle and with you consists mostly in removing old layers of fear and guilt and shame which have no place in your life today. They are like barnacles; they slow you down. And when you try to pry them off yourself, they only make you bleed and ultimately suffer more.

 

I did not plan humanity for suffering. I planned humanity for bliss. That is why the goal of Buddhism is bliss; otherwise the goal would be increased suffering which anyone but the mentally ill can see is wrong. Buddhism has it almost all right. Life can be hard because of humanity’s choices, not by My design.