Gratitude and Change

As you get ready for the New Year, here is an article from Inner Voice magazine to help you shed some of the baggage from your past

For the end of the Millennium, I would like to post one of my favorite newspaper columns. This was written in 1997 for my regular column in the local weekly.

In the spirit of the New Year I would like to share a quote from Joel Kramer, a yoga instructor in Bolinas:

"There is no way to stay the same. Life is change, and change in a person can take only two directions. You either become more rigid and crystallized, more set in your ways, or you continue to grow, transform, and open up to yourself and the world you live in."

For a very long time I dreaded this time of year. Starting at Thanksgiving and running through the Super Bowl the frenzy of commercialism, family expectations and my own emotional baggage were heavy burdens to bear. While I am still not thrilled with what goes on around me I have come to terms with many things. I have come to believe that life is like a coiled spring. A circle in spiral form. To watch a landscape, as the seasons change, it appears to go throughout the same cycle year after year. Yet there are subtle differences. A new plant is added, an old plant dies. There are new branches on a tree. This is how I have come to view my life. Facing the same basic challenges over and over they are slightly different, a new variation of a lesson previously taught.

In this spirit, I would like to share a poem with you that I wrote in 1992.

Spirit and Substance; Moving around the Circle

Keep me moving around the circle

moving with courage

moving with gentleness

moving with love

moving forward, trusting that all is well

moving with faith, not sure where I am going, yet going anyway

moving to the space within, toward trust, forgiveness, and compassion

moving with awareness, letting go of grudge or bias, judgment or blame

moving away from expectations toward acceptance

moving to bridge the isolation, the sense of helplessness from fear and anxiety

moving toward acknowledgment of how other express love for me

moving beyond emotional chaos toward a fuller living experience

moving forward for the long run, the long term

moving toward full engagement, in my community, the community of the larger good

moving with strength of the Spirit

moving with grace an unearned gift

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