style="font-size:15px;"> Personally I am burned out. I have expressed a wish to my husband recently to go on a silent retreat. I have had a strong desire to disconnect and to re-connect to something real. I have been missing my family in Ireland a lot. The love I feel is very real and unchanging but the sharing of meals, milestones, lengthy phone calls and most of all time, has diminished. I have been struggling with the acceptance of that and its inevitability after eighteen years abroad. I am the one who moved so far away, so I take responsibility and acknowledge that everyone, including me is overwhelmed these days.
This morning as I walked my dog Otis I could feel my irritation about this situation fuelled with thoughts like, I am always the one to pick up the phone and to travel the six thousand miles to see my family. No one had come to see me in the last five years and as for phone calls there is nothing but dead air. I’d hear no news of home if I didn’t pick up the phone myself. Would anyone even notice if I stopped calling or visiting? Feeling very sorry for myself, I wondered was I wrong to wish someone would call me for a change. Was it too much to ask?
As I had this thought, I recalled at least two friends who had shared with me that they felt the same way; that they were always the one to call either friends or family. Maybe everybody feels this way. Maybe all of us are making calls to people from whom we wish to hear, and at the same time getting calls from people who we don’t regard as essential to us, so we discount those calls. That idea made me smile as I thought of all the disgruntled people not seeing the good they have but wanting what they don’t; a very human condition.
Just then a California bluebird flew out of the tree I was passing and landed to the right of my path. My smile broadened to a laugh! It always delights me to see a bluebird, for one thing, it is rare and for another they always remind me–“the bluebird of happiness is in your own backyard.” I needed the reminder this morning and I am glad for how Spirit uses nature’s messengers. I was reminded I am responsible for my own happiness and I choose once again to simply count my blessings; an age old wisdom that never looses its effectiveness.
In truth I get great pleasure out of calling those I love and I choose to stay focused on that. When I feel lonely I can remedy that by reaching out to someone else. When I take the focus off of “poor me” I quickly realize there is so much need in the world and I have something to give. The love and connection I wish to feel is in the giving and I feel it when I care for another human being, or an animal or plant, or my home or myself. I don’t have to be rigidly focused on my family; I am surrounded by people whose day I can brighten as I brighten my own by connecting with them. It is up to me to bring balance to my life and remember what is truly important and meaningful. The internet is a tool and I am in control of how I use it.
As Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher, so wisely put it “Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” The world of a thousand things, as delightful as it is, can be a distraction, an illusion, an avalanche of nothing, depending on your way of thinking.
The Queen
By Joan Doyle
It was June 2009. Recession, foreclosures and unemployment were the predominant news items in the U.S. and Europe; in fact, people across the globe were affected in some way by recent economic events. Work-wise it had not, so far, been a good year for me in Los Angeles. With ample time and not a lot of money, I managed to travel to Ireland to celebrate my parents 60th wedding Anniversary. It was simply an event that couldn’t be missed. It was a joyous occasion, which my parents anticipated with delight and enjoyed thoroughly, despite my mother being wheelchair-bound and having other minor health issues. Seven of my siblings were present, as well as their various spouses, and sixteen grandchildren. There was singing and eating and speeches galore.
I had a little over a week to savor visits with my family amid the lush overgrowth of the Irish summer. Every wild plant was at its peak, lavish and exuberant with blossoms and foliage. I was lucky to be experiencing a week of sunny and dry weather, hoped for all winter long by the Irish, but often barely glimpsed between the nimbostratus and the stratocumulus layers of cloud that lie like cotton wool blankets on the emerald land.
Of course this was how I recalled my childhood summers: wandering in shorts from the village to the sandy river for a cooling swim; or playing tennis on the street during Wimbledon season, and coming home with shoulders sunburned and hungry for salad sandwiches make by my mother from the fresh and wholesome produce of our own garden. A visit home was always crammed with reminiscences, and on this morning as I walked home from the village with the newspaper, I longed for those simpler and carefree times.
I was finding it hard to keep optimistic about my work situation as I thought about returning to LA. Just then my eyes fell on a large coin in the soil at my feet. It was not an American penny and did not have those words, “In God We Trust,” but it might as well have had, for I relate all found coins now with that message and the origin–the universal divine. I picked it up. It was an English fifty-pence piece, more than an inch in diameter with seven sides and depicting Queen Elizabeth’s profile. Quite unusual in these parts, as Ireland has used the Euro since 1995 and has always had its own separate currency from Britain.
I looked at the Queen on its face and it reminded me of a book on CD I had listened to years before called “The Stages of Man.” It described the stages of a man’s life, and how he is a prince during his thirties as he builds his kingdom, but in his late forties and fifties, he is established and is the king of his realm. At this stage he needs a queen to share it with. A woman getting involved with a man at this age needed to understand how a Queen acts, and that she now needed not so much to nurture and support the career-oriented prince, but to increase her ability to receive the bounty shared joyously by the King. I connected this story with the Queen on the coin, and my message was clear.
I needed to trust that I was receiving from the universe all that I needed, and more. I thought of my loving family, the festive celebration, the joy and abundance of Ireland’s bountiful summer, my delightful husband back in my other home in California, and I began to feel wealthy. A verse came to mind, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Security is not found in objects or things. True security is found in knowing who we are, as children of the universe, heirs to all of its goodness, if we will but receive.
I needed to feel worthy to receive, like a queen must feel–deserving and loved. I looked at the Queen on my coin and I said a silent, heartfelt, “Thank you.” Remembering the bad news constantly in the Irish papers and on radio, I thought, “Spirit is my source. I see its bounty everywhere and my need for food and shelter are met today. That’s all I need to know. Thank you, I receive with gratitude the bounty shared joyously by the King.”
This was the truth then, it is the truth now and is always the truth.
Listening and Allowing
There is guidance for each of us and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.
- Emerson
Listening is a broad category of communicating with the Divine because we cannot heed any guidance unless we are willing to listen. Listening has within it an intention to hear. It is most often done in solitude. Walking in nature, meditating, reflecting over coffee in the morning, doing mundane tasks, all are ways in which we might be receptive to guidance.
In
