Contemplations on a Beach Vacation

This was written Dec 16 before I left for a week at the Outer Banks, NC.

I'm going to the Beach Sunday.  My soul is already there.  I've already slowed my senses down to take in the vast nothingness of the waves and water and sand and sky.  I want to take my camera and paints and pads and pens and I don't want to take anything. I want hours of nothingness, staring into the repetitive roll of wave after wave assuring me that my life is not my own - I came from the stars and will return there.  Meanwhile I have choice and love and patience to explore. I  have my senses to show me the creativity of the Universe.  I hesitate to mention God, but I believe in God.  I believe in a God who is my best friend, my closest confident, my greatest comfort, my biggest cheerleader, my adviser and quiet witness to all that I do and all that I am.  He is the parent I've longed for and have always had within me.  Even as a child, I felt cradled by his presence, never alone and scared - alone and anxious, unsure what to do or how to handle a given situation, but solidly knowing I am not alone.  When I listen, God is immediately there for me, telling me what I need to know or what to do next.  I draw my inspiration from listening to God.  I follow leadings from God and, on perfect days, I allow myself to open up to God's creativity and channel that.  My best art comes directly from God.  My desire to change women's body consciousness comes from God.  My blessings come from God.  And I also believe my challenges come from God, giving me opportunities to love more deeply and with greater awareness of the frailty of our humanity.

I often wish I cold overcome my humanity and embody more God-like qualities.  I wish I had an open door forgiveness policy.  I wish I could immediately glean the lessons being offered in challenging situations.  I wish my heart were as big as God's.  I wish I could incorporate God-consciousness into everything I do, say, think or feel.

That is why I am going to the beach on Sunday - to be a hermit, away from the pulls of my human life, to a place where I can more easily focus on what really matters to me.  I want to drop everything and become conscious of my breath, of the pull of my eyelids towards sleep, of the yearnings of my body for specific nutrients, of my soul for the roar of the ocean, the moon rising over the water, the crash of the surf as it and I play tag, me screeching as it gets me, it roaring in fake scariness as it plunges towards me then just as quickly pulls away.

I breathe deeply, settling into the slow goodness of it all.

On allowing oneself to become great.

I found this today when I was reading Marianne Williamson's Everyday Grace: Having Hope, finding Forgiveness, and Making Miracles.  It speaks loudly to me.  I want to make a huge difference in the world and I sometimes feel presumptuous to think I could.  This quote offers me courage and belief that it's OK to go ahead and do my best to take on the vision I have of how the world can be and to work towards actualizing it.

There is a light in all of us because God put it there.  We can look to those in the world who evolved to a higher level of consciousness during their lifetimes.  They were not made of different stuff than we are so much as they made different decisions than we do.  It was not EASY for Abraham Lincoln to be the Abraham Lincoln we revere today; it was not EASY to be Susan B. Anthony, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr.  They were born, as all of us are, with potential greatness.  But the actualization of that greatness was not predetermined.  They could have decided to do and be otherwise.  Whatever spiritual force moved within their hearts, luring them toward a magnificent destiny, is a lure that exists in all of us.  There is no rational formula for greatness, for greatness is not rational.  On some mysterious level, despite whatever resistance they felt, the great are those who simply said yes at times when others would have said no.  Fear did not deter them so much as it honed them.  Something called to them from a higher place, and they responded to what they heard.

Are we not being called by history to become the greatness that lies in us?  What happens to this Earth now is up to us.  We can remain who we are and sink further into the troubled world we have already made, or we can allow our hearts to crack open like cosmic eggs, out of which will emerge transformed creatures - our own true selves.

Look at it closely, in yourself and others, and tell me that creature does not have wings.

May you each have the courage to become the greatest you have within you to become.  Blessed be.