I heard a kid say in a letter to Santa Claus: “I don’t believe in you, but I think you’re a good idea.”  And isn’t it funny that so many people who don’t believe in god spend time fighting with it all the same? 

There are days that nothing makes sense, death seems not like a door but a slam in the face.  Illness is just too puzzling and brothers thousands of miles away, and even further in the heart, just take turns out of sight.   Memories are more like a scornful tease than warmth. 

But Krishna talks about “calm gentle” stillness and purity.  While the mechanics of my daily life scream to me from the other room, over my tense back and neck muscles, like hungry cats. 

I rest in the timeless here and now.  I breathe into the moment.  I know nothing, I hold nothing, I claim everything, I am that I am.

“Actions do not cling to me, because I am not attached to their results.”  Thus, says Krishna, “I am free.”

I shake off the results, the finished product, my boss’s reaction, my brother’s harsh remarks.  I am teflon and all comments slide off me like my ass on ice.  I throw up my hands and surrender to the law of release.  I unclasp my tight fingers and let the butterfly free.

“Perform all work carefully,” the sweet image of God said, “guided by compassion.”  Carefully I move through the day, knowing that I am an actor of love, moving love, creating love, watching love, hearing love.

Sitting like a sluggish love early in the morning, I warm myself in Your Presence, my dear brilliant blue charioteer.

I have to trust before I can lean.  But that’s like thinking about each breath.  I trust the Spirit.  I don’t trust me.  Again and again the truth is that I cannot fail, only walk a detour before I see the hand of Grace in my life.  It is always and everywhere.

Evolving through the breathing of this Spirit’s grace is about relishing in the leaning, aware always that my life depends on my breath of grace.  So I should let grace lead my day, direct my thinking, guide me in all right actions.

I am pulled from matter to spirit, pouting to grace, argument to release each moment.  What would love do? is my guiding light today.  How am I evolving through love right here and right now.  In each action, thought, feeling, let me see the uplifting brilliance of the sweet Path of heaven in front of me.

Especially when I say “no”.  When I choose to do less.  At that moment someone asks me for an appointment, to move up, to do more, I see the Way of love to say, “no thank you.  I prefer to sit and be still.  To know no thing.”

Love is weird, love sucks, love is stupid, love is forever and ever.  One lover in the next room, the other a brother very distinctly across the continent.  My heart aches for him so very far away facing a life change that will join him until the end.

But then again, we face that every day crossing the street, or driving 70 mph on the highway trusting the engines made by hundreds of hands throughout thousands of countries.

No matter how battered, the heart is held by Spirit.  The spirit of me is endless, the little fist-sized human heart pumps just for so long.  I throw myself on the Path of Spirit, dragging my little achy, stretched-out human weeping heart.

Some of us say that our spirit woke up.  We see differently–sometimes with the eyes of Spirit, the eyes of Love.  If I look around me with the eyes of love, all I see is love stuff in form.  From tiny cards, keys, toys, tools on the desk that someone made as they produced their living for self, health and family, to photos around me of family grown and gone.

Can I spend a day really seeing that all there is, is love?  From each thought that evolved each thing I see, including people to the brilliant green growing earth around me–can all that be the stuff of love?

I’m human.  I get stuck in “what’s in it for me.”  It is hard some days to see that any hope I can shine out to others is a gift that keeps coming back to me.  I was a warrior in my last life, and tromped through distant lands, carving out countries, pushing back hoards, saving the weak and making a stand for the righteous. 

These days I push papers around my desk and fight for procedures for a small group of hard-working women who seem to falter at the years of diligence and tiny scribbles of details.  Love IS in the details; in every detail.

Today I honor and cherish every smallest detail of my life–shining out the stuff of love.

Let me see how simple life is.  Give me a tiny nudge that I take my hands off my eyes and instead of seeing trouble, let me see love incarnate in the humans, the trees, the sky, the sweet fragrance of fall air.

Lift from me all self-centered fears that I do not get what I think I want, that I don’t lose what I think I have, that I need so much to be in view of those I want to love me.  Remove the stiff stories in my feeble mind that sets up such rigid walkways.  Free me to be a new me.

Whisper in my ears of such dullness how to see You in All That Is.  Every single keyboard, comma, shirt, backache, and voice on the phone.  Allow to rest in the single truth that You are the only reality, dressed up in a million costumes.

Halloween is coming.  Maybe I’ll dress up as You.

It’s a gift to be simple
It’s a gift to be free.
It’s a gift to come down where we ought to be.

And when we are in the place just right
We will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
To laugh, to love, we will not be ashamed.
To turn, to turn, it will be a delight

Till by turning turning
We turn round right.

This is a song by Judy Collins set to an old hymn tune or something or a Beethoven melody–don’t know the details.

I just need the simplicity and ease, truth and comfort of this song today.  So as I easily embark into a situation of confusion, powerlessness, fear, distrust and self-doubt, I turn easily, comfortably in truth and delight.

I may not “get out of here” alive, but the longer I’m on the planet, the more I want to enjoy every minute of it.  Gratitude distracts me from achy muscles, out of shape old body, tired joints.  Simply watching a tree wave at me as the wind whispers sweet nothings–how could heaven be better?

There’s this story about a woman who died, and when she got to heaven she started arguing with the angel at the gate that she wasn’t ready yet. “What do you mean you’re not ready?” said the angel.  “I haven’t danced enough!” she said.  The angel smiled and seemed to understand and he sent her back for more dancing.

I want to dance and sing and complain and wrestle with that angel every morning about more dancing and singing.  Wrestling, in fact, is a dance.

So today amid catastrophic management, unfinished business, “no time”, rushed meetings, stiff shoulder, missed exercises, I relish and cherish the blessing it is to be twirling in this Divine human dance.

Just do something different.  Change the rules, make them laugh.  Say yes instead of no.  Don’t say anything and watch them squirm.  Bring a heart rock instead of flowers.  Write a poem instead of buying another saucepan.

Surprise the world today with joy in the midst of angst.  Love the unlovable.  Cherish the garbage.  Be grateful for the pain.  Twist the world around in your fingers like the hair on your head.

Today the Divine and I are going to watch for jokes–point out the fun, giggle behind the scenes at the serious ones, laugh through the meetings behind the door.  And just simply pull the chair out the rug out the rules out the pain of false beliefs out from under your mind.

Nothing is real and miracles is the heaven where we live.

I throw myself on the Path of Heaven.

Actually, I’m on it all the time, it’s all in how I see it.  This IS heaven.  The most brilliant world, beautiful earth, fascinating creatures, ever-present love that binds us together.

Pain, tragedy, loss, death?  Well, nature doesn’t mourn itself?  Why should we.  What if this was the most magnificent planet in the universe?  And WE got the REWARD of being here?!?! 

Again, it’s in the perception.  Destruction is hard to see for humans.  Especially when the mind and body keeps thinking it will endure forever.  The spirit does last forever, but not the body and the mind.

My body and mind today, then, cherish this here and now.  No matter the “rush”  no matter the disorganization causing impossible tasks, the frustration, the boredom the insufficiencies the fear. 

Today it is about being really really really glad to be human.