217 God Grant Me the Patience

The Serenity Prayer. Grandma F loved it, and then Mom also quoted it. For years, we had a small plaque on the wall that had some strange looking, cartoon birds, declaring the words.

As I write, I really can’t remember what stories have already been told.  Sometimes I sneak over to the blog site, and do a word search, but that is often inaccurate.  

The stories we tell are retold by the mind.  We live inside a set of stories.  Some have some physical history.  Some are fully imaginary.  And most are created in combination, some of what the majority of people would call “fact”, with added juicy content created by emotional reaction and fake memory.

This year, “fake news” was a new term, strangely used in irony.  The mind adores fake news.  It creates our lives around the theme. 

In my reality, I woke several times last night.  I sat with the Creator’s change in seasons, the moment where we move toward the light.  I prayed for the planet, felt love streaming around and through me, drifted between the realms.  It was two.  I went back to sleep.

Dreams drifted in and out.  There was an old white house that supposedly belonged to my Grandpa Plumb.  The wall was open, apparently without reason.  There was an enormous staircase next to the space, against the missing wall, as if someone removed the other half of a duplex. 

Someone was trying to get the renter to comment on whether to repaint the exterior, whether to sell it, or continue to rent.  She showed no interest whatsoever in making any comment.

Another dream had a home that reminded me of the Granite Falls house.  There was this teaching element to the dream.  The theme was that “men need a space”, like a man cave perhaps.  I was working with Courtney’s husband, a distant relative if he happened to still be related.  At the end of the dream, I was exasperated by two kids that lived there, that they had made a deal to help out, had enjoyed a day off beforehand, and were now refusing to follow through on what would take five minutes to do.  They were not James’ kids, but representations of humanity.

Why do I remember these strange specifics?  What do they mean about the processes of my subconscious?  Is it any different than what I perceive as fact?

Photo of a lake with sun shining on the forest brown orange color with text of Serenity Prayer in white
The Serenity Prayer for Patience

When I finished the night, my first thoughts of the morning came.  The Serenity Prayer.  Grandma F loved it, and then Mom also quoted it.  For years, we had a small plaque on the wall that had some strange looking, cartoon birds, declaring the words.  Maybe my mind is using the prayer to remind me of their love!

The Serenity Prayer is an interpretation.  It is not in the Bible.  The probable basis, Philippians 4:6-7 (International Standard) reads: 

Never worry about anything. Instead, in every situation let your petitions be made known to God through prayers and requests, with thanksgiving.  Then God’s peace, which goes far beyond anything we can imagine, will guard your hearts and minds in union with the Messiah Jesus.

Gratitude.  Praying for the good of all.  Thanksgiving.  My hope is that we all meet this inner serenity, that everyone can access the love that I felt from my mother and grandmother, and that we all find union with the highest form of love.

208 Lipstick

I am looking for something like lipstick. What do I do that can reset the world? In just one moment. Restart. Reprogram. Relieve the burden.

That might be the most unlikely title of all times.  Lipstick is very low on my list of vocabulary, but I woke up in a commercial for the product, a dream commercial.

red lipstick
Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.com

The announcer was listing the features.  “But wait, there’s more…”  It is a style of advertising that was used in my youth.  Endless add ons, low, low prices.  The advertised machine had a gold colored cube.  Apparently, lipstick could be melted and remolded, even recolored, and when it went into this cube, it would come out tube ready.  

So the apparatus allowed a person to mold, color, and re-purpose the ends of used product.

I don’t wear lipstick.  Or, I only wear lipstick on the most interesting of days, and even then, the color would not contrast a regular lip tone.  Lipstick appears once a year, maybe.

My mom wore lipstick every day.  Every day.  Each one.  She ascribed to a mantra that declares that lipstick resets your life.  When things started to slide, a little lipstick brings the world back to order.  (We should all be wearing lipstick right now.)

Mom grabbed the lipstick tube before she left the house, before Dad came home, when something puzzling was bothering her, and when a car drove into the driveway.  I found her behavior as odd as she found mine.

Coffee and lipstick.  She could not understand my opposition to either.  She honestly believed I would pick up the habits somewhere along the way, that she had failed me, or that I was being rebellious.   When I left for college, traveled to Central Washington University, that was when everything was supposed to fall into place.  But my habits didn’t change.

Google spit out a long list of dream meanings.  My favorite was “harmony and affluence ahead.”  Mom would have picked harmony.  Wearing lipstick created a mindset of inner harmony that could spread to all she touched, through words spoken lovingly, through a smile or a kiss.  Mom rocked the gloss.

I am looking for something like lipstick.  What do I do that can reset the world?  In just one moment.  Restart.  Reprogram.  Relieve the burden.  Instantly.  I could do Burt’s Bees.  There’s still time.  

182 Listen

Open. Listen. Let peace enter your heart.

Don’t listen to me, actually.  If there is anything I have learned in a half decade on this planet, it is that I seriously know very little.  Do I have wisdom to share?  Oh ya.  But is it pertinent to your journey?  One way or the other, it actually is.  But sometimes human information, human sharing, human thoughts can be the catalysts that move us in entirely the opposite direction.  So “don’t listen” to me. Go where led. Internally. 

For some reason, parenting comes to mind.  It is written that extreme parenting sends a child in the exact opposite direction.  A super Democrat might have a Republican child.  An extreme hunter/meat eater may sway offspring to be vegan.  And so on.  It’s reactive.  Mom and Dad had some ways of handling money that made the world complex.  I feel like my brothers and I swung the pendulum to the other side.  Naturally.  By growing up in a form of monetary chaos, we saw that we wanted something different.

To retreat into listening is about higher self, God, or whatever a person thinks keeps the planets in motion and the universe expanding.  Whatever that is. 

When Amber spoke of listening, one of her most glowing points was that we expect a certain kind of hearing.  We even expect a certain type of answer.  And the Eternal doesn’t work like that.  The Infinite is infinitely creative!

Perhaps you’ve found a theme, cleared up some internal and external space, surrendered a boat load of personal beliefs, and feel ready to listen.  No burning bushes.  No speaking angels.  No sun rays pointing out a beloved.  

The craziest methods unfold.  Vibration.  Intuition.  Dreams.  Art work.  Successes leading from one space to another.  Failures pushing away.  A subtle statement from family.  Repetition in what you see or hear.  A movie.  A breakthrough at work.  Inner knowing… The list is so long.  And it gets, hmm, odd… for those that can accept odd.

It helps to acknowledge that you want to hear from the advanced spaces.  It helps to work with, rather than against, the Eternal.  Some people do it so naturally that they are unaware.  

The library had a program on Henna art, back when the kids were teens.  I wanted everyone else to have the experience, so did not hurry into line.  The woman did my art work last.  She drew the symbology methodically, beautifully.  She talked about her expression.  

I stared at the work.  She had defined my life and my challenges and my growth with some quick strokes of henna.  Without any knowledge of “me”, she had allowed Spirit to speak directly to me.  

She was clueless.  I asked the right questions. And I didn’t divulge her gift.  But she was listening, doing her calling, giving incredible gifts to the receivers.  Oblivious.

Prayer and meditation are wonderful ways to open to listening.  Creating, doing a form of art, baking for expression, all open the inner ear to the Divine.  But the messages may be as obscure and silent as the wind, and may come whispering in when you don’t have a rosary in your hand.  Open.  Listen.  Let peace enter your heart.