This I Know For Sure...

This morning I have a ZOOM meeting with a few people from the church that I attend. I was invited last week by one of the sweetest voices that I haven't heard in a very long time. All attendance has been cancelled of course since the pandemic began. What I noticed right when I heard her voice was a lift in my physical heart, it brought a deep knowing and smile to every part of me.
I've missed seeing, sharing and hearing from these people that I have grown in community with there since I was a little girl. They are my family too. They love me. They know me.
I have felt that positive surge and joyful anticipation for a few days now and this morning I get to see them, talk with them and I know already that it will be good. It will be goodness. It will be filled with love and joy.

How do I know this? I know this because I have learned to trust in love and it's ever present presence. I know what love feels like and I am deeply blessed because of it in my life.  Over and over again I have experienced this love in my lifetime and know that it resides deeply in everyone of us and never dies. Sometimes is is dormant. Sometimes we lose sight of it. Sometimes we don't FEEL it anymore, especially in the midst of so much loss, pain, grief and fear... but it is still there.

Love is a voice, a memory, a smell, it is the life blood of our hearts. It fuels the very breath that allows us to even exist and do all of the things that we do. For me, love, that one small thing creates purpose, passion, reasons for why we even try sometimes, it surges through, it perseveres, in our thoughts, in our words, in our actions.

Today, I am choosing love. I am trusting that it will rise up from my heart, into my mind and filter through my hands, voice and with every step I take and in every decision I make today.
In gratitude and with all the love that I have been able to receive in my life, I return it to all of you! For without it I can do nothing and with it I have everything I have ever needed.

Love is hope.

Love Always,
Denice

Progress Not Perfection

It's Friday!! Not just any Friday, but THE Friday of Memorial Weekend!

Flags are out, the cemeteries are fully manicured and are in all their celebratory glory to remind us, to remember! To remember all those who have gone before us, but more importantly those who have served in our military, fought for our freedoms and instilled in us a grounding sense of who we are and where we come from! I am humbled and grateful on so many levels for their sacrifice and lives lived! Thank you!

This weekend also starts the planting season and the warmer side of Maine's recreational season. Summer is creeping up on us in a few short weeks and in so many ways it's looking very different for all of us this year. But, some things will remain the same, this is what I am clinging to and am watering in my own life moving forward.

Usually, all of these moving parts of the upcoming season are inspiring, thought provoking and a glorious space of time for us outdoor enthusiasts and planners, always in hope of good times ahead for all of us, even this year, in the midst of a lock down, quarantine, social distancing global pandemic. Who would have thought right?... Gloves on!

What's on your docket for the weekend and upside down summer ahead?

For me.. I've decided to hit the ground, praying I can maintain a slow and steady pace with forward momentum, as I have a controlled crash list of planting, pruning, tending, camping, cooking, building, preserving and cultivating that will hopefully weave itself organically throughout the course of the weekend, into next week and stretch itself out into the undetermined summer ahead. But for now, in the next few days, I'll be a full on, Mary, Mary quite contrary.. how does your garden grow dirt maven!

I'll possibly curse the days ahead when the yield comes in, God willing of course, and the blanching, freezing, canning and the like begin to happen in the heat of the humid, sticky summer..

Note to self... pull up the summer tide chart because the ledge crawling at high tide here is a blissful baptismal renewal when those days are hot and intolerable. I can not wait for that! Nothing better then the ocean to cure all that ails you! My all time favorite thing of summer, says this old mermaid.

I'll post another entry once things are underway, but for now my goal will be simple... even in the midst of my grand plans, mapped garden plots and piles of seeds and starts.. My goal will be to remember.. that it's ALWAYS the process that heals me in everything I do. So in this too.. progress not perfection for our weekend, my garden, the summer ahead and with every daily choice in my life.

This is where I will begin.

Happy Memorial Day Gang!

Peace Always,
Denice

Be A Positive Force

Last night I gathered with a small study group that started or should I say evolved over the last six months. It's a wonderful clutch of women that share their experiences, involvement in community and spiritual journeys on a weekly basis.

I say it evolved mainly because I didn't set out on my own to host or create it, it just happened. The parts of my life that reveal themselves in this way I always try to lift to a higher power then myself and know that if it all opens up and most things just kind of click along it is divinely created and meant to be. Therefore, I try to get out of the way and just create the space needed for whatever is supposed to unfold within all of it.

Our discussion last night was prompted by a small portion of a book that we've all been reading. Beneath the topic of discussion was a noticeable concern that came up and was politically charged due to the obvious campaign circus that lie blatantly before all of us.

The first comments shared boiled down to complete discouragement, disbelief, frustration, anger, fear and helplessness. On so many levels you really couldn't resolve, guide or comfort anyone with the reality that each of us have found ourselves in. After much selective ranting and finding that we were all of the same mind we stopped. We decided not to go there and to relate somehow back to what we had been reading to what we were experiencing and thought unanimously to seek a better way and to reach for higher ground.

The book that we are reading is a parish wide small group book study by Matthew Kelly. Our pastor thought it would be a wonderful devotional and spiritual boost for our Lenten journey and provided books for everyone. The grace that came from our shared experience last night felt like one that should be shared on a bigger scale no matter what faith base you've been planted in.

Here are a few pieces of where we went with that grace.

"Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances." Thes 5 16-18

~ God is always at our side to help us make the best decisions
~What are you most grateful for today?

This stopped the fear, anger and any other entourage of thoughts to a screeching halt and gave us "pause".. Gratitude does that. Gratitude gains you the prospective to create that pause in the middle of the flurried funnel of despair that can consume us when we feel out of control. Gratitude for the simplest things and once you begin to follow that trek of thought you begin to see things with a bit more light, a shred of hope and begin to trust that this isn't up to us all by ourselves and to let go a bit.

Another piece that worked it's way in was...

"A joyful heart is good medicine." Proverbs 17:22
~There is nothing like the joy that God wants to fill our hearts with.
~Who or what is robbing you of your joy today?

Again, this gave us hope for the journey. Another tool, another place to pause and gather up our strength and courage to not feel defeated but to feel challenged instead. Challenged to stare fear, anxiety, panic and defeat right in the eye and.... Smile! Laugh! Be Kind! Help Someone! Turn off our phones, social media, news and drama binging and sit with a real person for an hour. Sing! Dance! Be Foolish and Silly.. relax!! 

After some processing this morning and mucking about in all of the pieces that made our evening conversations passionate and lively, I came up with a few certainties to embrace in these uncertain times. Certainties that if applied daily could change your life and even others around you that you didn't even know were watching.

Be a light in the darkness. Be a positive force in the world. Remember that negative thinking empowers the problem and if we embrace joy in its truest form~ LOVE. We have all won the race.

Can I get an Amen!