REMOVING OBSTACLES

REMOVING OBSTACLES

October 4, 2012

Happiness is a skill,

emotional balance is a skill,

compassion and altruism are skills,

and like any skill, they need to be developed.

~ Matthieu Ricard

As the turning of the year brought me into my 57^th year, I was filled with excitement and enthusiasm.  It felt like this was going to be my year to take wing and fly high.  At last I would know some success in that which I’ve been endeavoring to achieve for some long years now.  I’ve been the seed lying dormant in the dark earth.  I’ve been the seedling emerging.  I’ve had my summer in the sun, growing, sweating, toiling.  Now it is time for harvesting.  Now it is time to show my true colors.  Feeling healthier, happier, I was deeply engrossed in my writing and preparing to step out from my hermit cave to once again share my teaching skills in the area of Restorative Practices and the Peace Circle process.  Time for me to fly!

On my birthday, I awoke from a dream where angels (or some sort of Light Beings) were singing to me—and I never hear music in the few dreams that I manage to remember!  They were singing “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone.  I can see all obstacles in my way.  Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.  It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day!”  I felt pure bliss.  I was sure this meant it was going to be a golden year for me.

In 2011 I had come to understand at a deeper level my calling, or life purpose if you will, to be that of a Remover of Obstacles.  Through my writing and my teaching, through my study and sharing of knowledge, through the testimony of my life, through my desire to give generously in financial ways—yes, I would help to remove those obstacles that hinder others from moving forward in their lives.  2012 would be the year when I would finally take wing and succeed in all that I had been trying so hard to achieve.

I made it to the evening of my birthday before crashing full steam into a huge obstacle of my own ignorance, damaging several relationships in the process.  As the year has unwound itself, I have bumped and banged into one obstacle after another, tripping over my own Ego and wrestling every Monster that has ever haunted my path.  It wasn’t until nearly six months after that shining morning seranade that I finally understood the message.  I can see clearly now…I can see all the obstacles in my way.  The dark clouds that had me blind have dissipated.  The song does not say that the obstacles are gone.  Only that I can see them clearly now.  It is no longer dark and I am no longer blind.  Therefore, I can remove them.  How else could I expect to become a Remover of Obstacles if I do not first remove those that hinder my own life?

Of course, I feel just a little pissed off about this.  I mean, this journey inside has gone on and on and on and on and on…is there no end?  When will I fly free?  …And I immediately know I will fly free the instant I spread my wings and take off.  There is no cage.  There is no tether.  There is only my fear that holds me back. 

I mean, haven’t I done enough work by now?  Shouldn’t I be healed by now—body and soul, mind and heart?  …And I immediately know I am healed.  I’ve been healed for some time now.  I just haven’t lived like I am.  Like a cripple with her crutch, afraid to let go even though she is mended and whole again, I keep hobbling along. 

As the year is winding toward its end, I smile with satisfaction at the pile of junk I’ve heaped up: obstacles in my life that I have been steadily removing, month by month, week by week, day by day.  I am discovering that it is actually true that our success and happiness really are a result of our attitude—how we think and therefore what we believe—even if unconsciously. 

In need of more cash flow, this week I started a little side job caring for two young children two days a week: a 12 month old toddler and his four year old sister.  Five hours into day one and I ran face first into yet another "brick wall" I built once upon a time.  My Ego took center stage decked out in old habits of thought, old and crusty anger, and a whole lot of attitude about what is and is not important to be spending one’s time doing.  True to my prophetic birthday song, I could see clearly the obstacles in my way.  I just had to be willing to remove them.

During Day Two I asked myself a different set of questions than I’d been asking myself the previous day.  Whereas those questions had primarily to do with “What the hell am I doing here?”, on the second day I asked: “Would you look at this little boy and see his innocent, pure spirit shining through his blue eyes?  Would you allow yourself to consider who the Soul so recently incarnated into this sturdy little body might be?  Might it be a privilege, rather than demeaning to your education and “status” to invest some of your life into these two little ones?  When his angry wails pierce your sensibilities like someone running their nails down a chalkboard…can you see in him your own raging tantrums when you, like he, feel powerless to make Life give you what you want?” 

Following him at a snails pace down the front sidewalk while he investigated twigs and maple leaves and bugs, I wondered if those Beings who have chosen to serve humans by guiding and protecting us—Beings of much greater evolvement, intelligence and ability—look at us like babies; helpless, ignorant, demanding, needy babies.  Do they ever feel completely exasperated as we flail and scream and demand what we can’t have?  Do they ever tear their hair out when we make yet another mess in the world?  Are they ever totally bored with us?  Do they…no, they don’t.  I doubt it.  For the very fact that they are more highly evolved, living at higher frequencies of Light (information), Love and Joy.  We might in some ways be like babies to them, but if so, I’ll bet they are devoted to us. 

As I pursued these thoughts, I felt everything shift.  No longer angry and resentful of having to take this job, I felt gratitude and with that came ideas for all the things I could do and give.  I went home with my heart filled with peace, and the faces of my new teachers, a smiling, dimpled baby and a little elfin girl filling my thoughts.  Another obstacle removed. 

A CALL TO ARMS

A CALL TO ARMS

Monday, September 17, 2012
 

My mind is so filled up with thoughts I cannot release them quickly enough.  My heart is so full of feelings they are backing up and flooding the terrain of my inner landscape.  “Write!”, that whispered directive comes again.  And again.  And again.  But when I sit down, the thoughts and feelings tangle up so that I don’t know what to release onto the paper… 
 

I hear the blowing of the shofar, calling us to arms.  The split between the polarities in our world is widening, the dark is becoming deep and murky; the light is radiant and intense.  Those who are awake, alert, and aware look unflinchingly at the destruction and suffering we have collectively created—whether by intention, complicity, compliance, passivity or ignorance.  Helpless, angry, we wonder why those to whom we gave the power to resolve these problems are failing us.  We read.  We talk and rail.  Some sign petitions.  Some march.  Some strike.  Some do political work.  Some advocate for causes—there are hundreds of causes.  It all seems a drop in the bucket. 
 

We are invited to fine-tune our listening, for we may hear a call to arms of a different kind: weapons of love, forgiveness, compassion, gratitude, joy, courage, kindness.  The real battles we fight are in the mind fields where thoughts are the bullets and the bombs; better thoughts of love and healing, than hatred and destruction!  With this new way of warring, sieges of our cities are done with random acts of kindness and with the proliferation of projects that heal our Earth and one another.  We end this war by raising the energy vibrations of ourselves and one another and the very Earth and restoring balance in the energy fields of Earth, of Sea and Air and all who dwell within them. 
 

Re-creating a world where all may thrive will only happen if each of us is first willing to call a cease-fire within ourselves.  It takes just as much commitment and work and courage and perseverance to “fight” from within the Light as it does for those on either side of the line battling with the same weapons with the goal of destroying the “other”, or at least the work of the other.  The two have very different outcomes, however.  Battling against ego with ego, fighting hatred with hatred, raging against what we name “evil” from our fear; nothing changes no matter which side has their King on the Hill and their day of Occupation and Victory.  But entering the battle with weapons of love, like the Sun burning off the fog, the Light begins to replace the Darkness.

I like the idea that time isn't linear because it has taken me years to fully wake up, and more years to fully grasp the concepts of what it means to let go of Ego, to love my enemies, to root up old, toxic beliefs that tainted the Love that flowed through me.  It is taking me even more years beyond those to lay down new habits of thought and belief and action that are grounded in gratitude and joy, compassion and forgiveness.  But gradually this noisy gong and clanging cymbal has quieted and is now willing to not only enter the river, but to become the river—the River of Life, which is Love, which is Light.

   

November 7, 2012

REFLECTIONS ON ELECTIONS

Last evening I sat for a long time at the table with my ballot. Feeling the privilege, yet also wondering how free we really are; how much are we being manipulated into thinking we are free? If there are so many lies that are blatant, how many are sliding silkily through our lives undetected? Did I want to vote for the Justice Party, a party that reflects my deeply held beliefs? Was that really throwing away my privilege as some have said to me, or was this what this privilege is really all about? Talk about an undecided voter!

I thought about my commitment to walk the path of Love. If I am going to be one who bears Light in the world, if I am going to keep my feet to this pathway of Love that I have chosen, then I have to once again lay aside my fear and my cynicism and my judgment. I have to see the light in others, no matter how obscured, to see their goodness no matter how it has been twisted up in fear or buried under cruelty. In the same way that I must be willing to challenge my ignorance and make amends when I realize that that ignorance has caused harm, I must see the precious value of others who do harm because of their ignorance...and hope that they too will find their way to greater light.

I finally picked up the pen, and with gratitude for the privilege to be sitting at that table without having had to wait in line or suffer harassment; and with gratitude that I held a legitimate ballot; and with gratitude that even though I wish for a much different kind of political system--at least we still have one...I gave my President the benefit of the doubt and voted to give him four more years...and I filled in the circle that asks my Representative to please pack his things and go home--he's done enough harm...and I firmly said No! to the convoluted message that would pass itself off as "righteousness" when every syllable of it's message drips with arrogant judgment, separatism and superiority, and deeply biased ethnocentrism being packaged as the will of a Supreme Being. And one last No! to the thinly disguised attempt to suppress this very privilege I have to sit here and fill in this circle on this ballot.

In the dark hours of the new morning on the day my Dad would have been 85 I listened to my now and future President encourage us to view our political system with its fierce arguments and differing opinions and sheer (stinking) messiness (I had to add stinking!) not as something awful, or broken, but as what indicates that we are a people who live in a nation that is free. We get to argue. We get to debate and disagree. We get to "duke it out" so-to-speak. We get to sit at tables or step into booths and cast a vote for a man or woman or for or against an issue. We get to have and to express our opinion. Interesting perspective. I wonder what my Dad would say about all of this.

As he did four years ago, President Obama talked about working together to solve our problems and to build our nation. May it be so. May it be that we will learn to move beyond the privilege of holding onto our precious opinions and argue until we all grow old and die. May it be that we learn to listen. To listen deeply to one another. To open our hearts and minds to the solutions that will heal our Earth and one another and our world.

And may we rise to the call of our President...that our work, my work, your work, does not end with the closing of the polls and disposing of the yard signs. Our work has just begun. The time for arguing is finished. Now we work to create solutions and to heal all that our fierce fighting has destroyed and recreate the world so all may thrive. It begins within our own hearts. It must.

THE BEAST

Demons.
Each one, teach one.
How to do battle.
How to fall/sink/slink/slither/survive.
How to rise once again.
How to raise the pen, muster the energy, write for one's life.
          - Joyce Yamamoto -

July 16, 2012

I don’t want to be swallowed by this Beast again.  No, not today.

It used to be quick and painless; swallowed whole in the blink of an eye.  The pain came in the hellish living in the Belly of the Beast.  There is little pleasure in having one's parts slowly digested.  Worse was the extraction; the fighting to escape all the while knowing that although outside was the promise of sunshine and fresh air—there would be no freedom.  The Beast does not surrender.

But I have learned a powerful secret.  I have learned that the Beast has no teeth, and no power.  Why else could I still be whole and strong after spending so much of my life in It's belly?  I hold the power.  I command the Beast.  And I am free.

But sometimes I grow small and the Beast rises, furious and feral.  With It's terrible claws It rips into the flesh of my mind.  All the while, I hear It's cruel laughter mocking me for the weak-kneed craven I’ve become.  I hold the power.  I am stronger than It.  I know the magic that calls the Light and I know where the springs of joy are hidden within me.  I know the words of Love that will slay the Beast quicker than any sword.  I try to focus on these truths; faster and faster the Beast’s companions spin their illusions and I struggle to remember that these terrible razor-wire barricades are not real.  I huddle terrified in what I think is the corner of this prison, blind to the spaciousness all around me, blind to the throbbing power of Angels and Warriors at my back awaiting my command.

It takes me torn and bleeding, broken by the powerful gnashing of It's toothless jaws, into the dark stench of It's belly.  The worst of it is that I know where I am and I know how I got here and yet, I allowed it.  I don’t know which is the greater pain, the shame of this submission, or the hell of this place.

I am afraid to answer the question, “Why?”.  Why do I allow this?  I have the power within me to never allow this again.  Why do I?  

I hold a tiny cutworm on the end of my finger and I have my answer.  These tiny doubts feeding quietly at the base of my intentions, my hopes, my dreams.  A writer you say?  Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw.  Oh, here’s a juicy stem, fat and ripe with health—gnaw, gnaw, gnaw.  And, here, look at this thriving little seedling intent on growing up to be financially successful—gnaw, gnaw, gnaw.  And this...and here...oh!  Silently the strength begins to bleed from me.  Then I begin to hemorrhage.  Drawn to the smell of blood, the Beast descends.  And although I know all this, I am tired and I am angry and I am discouraged and I cower in my imagined corner, convinced it is too difficult—that it takes more energy than I am willing to expend to battle the Beast.  It feasts.

But not today.  Today I rise again.

I WANT TO BE A RAINBOW THINKER

April 18, 2012

On Being Light...

Pure, perfect, unbroken Light is white.

Pure, white light contains the full spectrum of Color.  When we break Light—when we divide it—we see the colors of the Rainbows.

Darkness is the absence of Light.  Darkness is Black…yet it contains all the potential possibilities of all the Colors that exist; needing only Light to reveal them.

Look around at the people, the creatures, the world revolving through it’s days and nights.  Mostly what we see, mostly what we experience, mostly what we ourselves embody are fragments of perfect wholeness: the colors that result when Light is broken.

BROKEN LIGHT

Our brilliant perfection has been

Unbraided and shot through

The Prism of Time and Space—

Our wholeness forgotten;

Unconscious of our Oneness.

We are Broken Light,

Fragments of White Perfection;

And In all our incarnations we have now become the Brilliance of the Rainbow.

We are magnificent.

We take away the Breath of the Universe.

Love is the Sun shining through a stained-glass window.

Joy is the riot of color in a wild poppy field in June.

Gratitude is the mirrored reflection in still water of

blue sky and flaming sun and green-crowned trees.

We are precious Light

set free to experience this one fragment of perfection.

LETTER TO A HOMELESS YOUTH

April 5, 2012

I am so thankful that you have found a place and people to help you heal and to create the life that you came here to this Earth to live.  There are so many cruel, painful, terrible things happening all around us in our world, and you have seen and experienced some of them.  You know this.  But all around you there is also beauty, and goodness and love and possibility.  I know this. 

Once I was in Seattle, waiting to catch a plane to somewhere else.  For several days it had been cold, with a drizzly rain that never quits, occasionally building into a torrential downpour before receding again to a miserable drizzle.  The plane took off and as we rose into the clouds, I couldn't see anything out my window but a grey-white blank.  Then, suddenly the flat white began to thin into ragged wisps and above our little plane was brilliant blue sky with a fiery sun shining down.  Then, out my little window I could see mountain tops sticking far up above the clouds, their snow caps sparkling in the sunlight.  The plane climbed higher and the clouds that were cutting Seattle off from the sunlight were now below us and looked like heaps of white snow piled up. 

Sometimes what we experience in life is dark, dismal, frightening.  Emotionally we may feel like nothing good or beautiful will ever come to us.  Then we begin to believe it and respond to the world around us defensively and angrily--"Who the hell decided I got picked to have a crap life?"

Maybe if you feel that nothing beautiful or good will come to you, you need to go find IT.  Just today, look for things that are beautiful, that make you smile.  Find at least one thing.  Notice each act of kindness that you experience...and act kindly to someone, at least once.  Did you eat today?  Did it taste wonderful?  Do you have a place to sleep tonight?

Tomorrow, do it again.  Begin to count up all the beautiful and good things you see and experience and DO.  Just today.  Each "today" as it arrives. 

That is how we open up the way for Love to heal our hearts and minds.  And it is that healing that opens up the way for more good stuff--possibilities and opportunities--to "come to us".  They don't really come to us...they were always there.  We just couldn't see them.  Like the sun shining above the storm clouds.  It is always there, we just can't see it until the clouds are swept aside--or somehow we are able to rise up above them.

I send Light and Love to you...I hope you see it today.

Be at Peace...you are finding your way.

SAWABONA...I SEE YOU

February 15, 2012

Whatever is occurring in the present moment is what we need to deal with right now. Staying with our real experience of ourselves and our situation will teach us exactly what we need to know for growth. (The Wisdom of the Enneagram, 346)

Her black eyes snapped at me across the table.  “No, you don’t have to think this way.  You’re White.” 

I thought that I understood “white privilege”.  I thought that I understood the friends that I have that are not white.  My awareness of the color of their skin and the ethnic identifiers molded into the flesh of their dear faces is no more or less important to me than their height and their weight and the sound of their laughter.  Because of our common desire to bring healing to the world through living and facilitating a restorative life-style, I think without thinking that we share the same corrective lens prescription in order to see the world with 20/20 vision.  

When I come to the table with these women, what is important to me is how our hearts and minds connect.  I don’t think about the differences in our heritage.  I don’t think about how these differences shape the meaning we attach to events, to language, to communication and decision making processes.  They are “just women”, as I am a woman.  They are my colleagues.  They are my mentors and my teachers and my friends.  I see them as wise.  I see their accomplishments.  I respect and admire their courage and their strength.  I have learned much from them.  I treasure their support.  I trust them.  I am known by them. 

She leaned across the table toward me, trying to make my white brain understand.  “You get to think this way.  You’re White.” 

Today I realize how very shallow is my knowledge of these dear women.  There are entire chapters of their stories that I do not even know exist; chapters that are outside my ability to ever fully understand or comprehend.  

Today I am made keenly aware that the differences in how we have been enculturated DO shape the meaning we attach to events, to language, to communication and decision making processes.  Today I am more cognizant to what respectful inclusivity requires; to the clear need to check and recheck our assumptions, our perceptions, our semantics.  Did I not know this?  Of course I knew this!  I teach this!  But today I am pressed to go much deeper.  Today I wonder about the lenses I wear as a white woman when I am with my friends who are not.

Someday, if my love is true, my heart faithful, they might allow me to sit with their pain and their grief.  If I am willing, they might be willing to release upon me their stuffed up, stifled and swallowed rage.  I would have to be as strong as the rocks upon which the waves break and crash, and as yielding as fertile soil.  I would have to embody all the thoughtless, insensitive, defensive, abusive and racist white people that my friends have encountered, and still remain the woman who sees the precious, brilliant jewel glowing inside their dark-skinned bodies. 

Today, I grieve.  Old wounds in the hearts of my friends are bleeding again because I have perpetuated living life and doing business according to the way of the white man.  On one level I didn’t know; it was not intentional.  But at a deeper level, I knew something was not okay about the decisions being made, decisions I participated in making.  And I did not stop.  I did not step forward to stop others.  I didn’t “have their backs”.

Today, I grieve.  I am connected to these women on a level that pays no mind to the dense energy that is our bodies.  Therefore, when one is hurting, we all hurt.  When we tear the fabric of the field of energy into which we are all woven, we tear apart our own soul. 

Today, I grieve.  I only hope these tears will heal my blindness. 

Next time I sit across the table from my friend, may I see her.  Fully.

Sawabona. “I see you.  I respect you. I value you. You are important to me”.

Shikoba.  “Therefore, I exist for you”.

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

February 13, 2012

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.


I can see all obstacles in my way.


Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.


It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)


Sun-Shiny day.



I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.


All of the bad feelings have disappeared.


Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for.


It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)


Sun-Shiny day.



Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies.


Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies.



I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.


I can see all obstacles in my way.


Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.


It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)


Sun-Shiny day.

….by Johnny Nash.

I was sung awake by Fairies this morning.  I could not remember the rest of the lyrics, but the refrain was stuck on repeat in my mind: It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright,

Sun-Shiny day.  The sun in fact was shining outside, etching the houses with early morning Rose Gold.  I felt physically light; happy blood coursing through my body.  I felt like I’d swallowed a sun.

It is my birthday.  Someone wished me happiness for my “new year”, something we often wish each other on our birthdays.  I smiled because a soft secret was unfolding inside me.  I AM HAPPY!

Perhaps this sounds a bit lame to my readers who are able to jump out of bed nearly every morning, filled with curiosity, a smile on their lips.  But my readers who understand that sheets can sometimes weigh up to 500 lbs. know the significance of getting up one morning and feeling that a deep well of happiness has opened up inside of you.

 

Later in the morning I was gifted with the source of the persistent tune in my brain and the lyrics to the song.  I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash. 

Last year I was gifted with a new friend who knows all about being joyful.  She is one of those people who smile all the time.  And it is genuine.  Not a nervous smile.  Not a “fixed face”.  A genuine, unconscious expression of her connection to joy.

She lent me a book about Joy, and later gave me an old cassette tape of a presentation that someone gave about joy.  And, I was gifted last year also with the privilege of taking an on-line course with the famous teacher, Jean Houston to help me understand my life purpose.  She talked a lot about joy.

 

It was a year of revelations for me.  A year of choices—to travel a path of Love and Joy and what it will require of me, or continue the rocky road I’ve been building for decades.  I, of course, chose the path of Love and Joy—wasn’t this what I’d been trying for 30  years to make myself into—a woman who lives from a healed heart of love?

I chose and God responded.  I was shown where I’d buried all the toxic anger and rage and shame that has been leaking its poison into my life for as long as I was aware enough to know it was wise to bury unspeakable thoughts and feelings.  Was I willing to dig that up and dispose of it properly?

I was shown a book of beliefs written in my own blood—negative beliefs that have nothing to do with the love and joy that are the fabric of the Universe.  Was I willing to give them up and write new ones?

I was challenged to practice love and joy in the face of my greatest fear—that I would be abandoned, forgotten, unloved.  Would I choose love and joy with no guarantees of outcome?

I was ready.  I said yes, and yes, and yes and kept my feet on the path.  Through the tumultuous spring.  Through the heat of summer.  Through the uncertainties of the Fall.  Through the confusion of the Holidays.  Into the dawn of this auspicious year—2012.

Yes, I believe I was serenaded into waking by Fairies…and maybe a few Angels this morning.  Perhaps they are the same ones who were around when I entered the world more than half a century ago. 

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.


All of the bad feelings have disappeared.


Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for.


It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)


Sun-Shiny day.

It’s Marvelous Monday, it’s my birthday, and it is gonna be a bright, bright, bright Sun-Shiny year!

ON BUILDING BRIDGES

January 25, 2012

Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom.

~ Phyllis Theroux

ON BUILDING BRIDGES

Knowledge is information. It is cerebral. It is about “knowing stuff”. We acquire knowledge from books and from listening to lectures and by observation.

Learning requires that we engage in some form of action that involves application of our knowledge. We must experience the knowledge. It is a process. We read a recipe and then we chop and mix and simmer and season. Now we have learned what it is to make soup. We read about healing a relationship and then we gather our courage and speak of that which is in our heart to our friend, our beloved, our colleague. We are learning to make human connection that heals.

Engaging in the learning process of applying our knowledge involves many lessons. A baby taking his first steps does not run around the block. In fact, he falls down every few steps! The first number of times I share honestly from my heart my words and tone may be mixed with fear, anger and defensiveness. It will be messy. But how else will I learn to run if I do not first learn to walk? How else will I learn to forgive and to love unconditionally if I do not first release that which prevents my forgiving and loving? How do I release my negative energy and cleanse old wounds or new without first acknowledging my pain? Like the baby letting go of the edges of furniture, like the six-year-old giving up his bicycle training wheels, will I find the courage to release my old defenses and mistrust? Initially, how could I not be awkward, like the baby stepping out on his own across the wide expanse of the living room?

Learning involves making missteps. It involves falling off the bicycle a few times before riding down the trail. Before I grow proficient and wise I will burn the dinner, cut my finger, drown a cactus, fold a few loads of pink stained laundry, starve a hamster, show up to meetings completely unprepared and yes, cause a sweet child to cry. And my friend. And my colleague. And the tired waitress who I criticized for the messed up order.

Active application of knowledge is to learning what experience is to wisdom. I like the image of mistakes being the bridge between inexperience and wisdom. Each time I mess up in a relationship, if I am willing to step back and observe what happened, I gain a piece of knowledge—a board in my hand. If I apply that knowledge the next time I am in a similar situation with someone, I am learning—how to trust, perhaps, or how to love, or growing the quality of patience. I hammer that board into place, building my bridge. Each time I am given the opportunity to practice this new learning, I gain experience. More boards, more nails; the bridge is growing, reaching for the other shore. In time, my experience produces proficiency and skill in my ability to communicate—including being able to forgo judgment and knowing when to hold my tongue. The sum of my knowledge, learning and experience makes it possible for me to trust and to love much more deeply and unconditionally than that first day when I looked inside my heart and saw the mess that was there. My bridge is complete. I’m on the other side.

My life is an interesting study in bridges. All manner of designs, materials and lengths, some are currently under construction. Many are beautiful and complete and provide me access to interesting lands. A few that once were lovely have fallen into disrepair. Have you ever defaulted into old behavior patterns and had to learn again an old lesson?

Today’s Practice

Rather than seeing my mistakes as endpoints or failures, today I regard them as necessary bridges to eventual understanding.