Candy Paull

Each person is nourished, made more whole, by making something which has life.
Christopher Alexander

Abundance is an inside job. It begins with love. When you are creating a career, a craft, a partnership, a work of art, a home, choose to put your whole heart into what you do. When you give attention and love to your work and your relationships, they begin to glow with Divine life. The energies of love and a high quality of attention create wholeness in your life and in this world.

If you are feeling fragmented and broken, a simple way to bring the pieces back together is to do one humble task with attention and care. Be fully present in the smallest, most insignificant task and you will tap into the innate wholeness of the entire Universe. A new sense of well-being becomes available to you when you wash dishes mindfully or sweep the floor as if it is the most important work in the world. The same goes for focusing on the person you are with. Your loving attention will create a place for relationship to become a sacred trust. This work, this person, become important in this moment because the here and now is all you really have access to anyway. Make it count.

Create small spaces of beauty and order in your life. Commit fully to what you are doing and who you are with. Be fully present and create beauty that satisfies your soul. If you love it and work with your heart, you will be rewarded.

Ask yourself these questions:
• Does this thing I have made or done make me feel more whole and alive?
• Do I feel nourished and happy because of it?
• Does it feel “right” somehow, even if others might not approve or consider it important?
• Do I feel that I did this to the glory of God or for the highest good?
• Am I serving a greater purpose by choosing to do this?

The quality of attention that we give to the arts and sciences we love redeems the time of our earthly existence.
William Anderson

The connection between the life of a made thing and the healing effect it has on the maker is…this: People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness.
Christopher Alexander

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
G. K. Chesterton

The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.
Thomas Merton

Love the inward new creation,
Love the glory that it brings;
Love to lay a good foundation
In the line of outward things.
Shaker song

(excerpt from Inner Abundance)

The earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is something so delightfully enchanting about treating yourself to fresh flowers. They are not “useful” in a utilitarian sense, but they feed the soul’s desire for beauty and bounty. The unfolding of a rose is a miracle, a living reminder that the life force unfolds from within. Lilies are fragrant, filling the room with sensuous sweetness. Sunflowers are the symbols of high summer and phototropic joy, like sunny smiling faces. Dogwood white against forest brown, deep blue dwarf larkspur, and tiny pink and yellow spring wildflowers make the earth new again as the season of growth begins after a long cold winter. The fierce red “I AM” of a tulip, the tender petal pink of a rosebud, or clouds of white crabapple blossoms at their peak of perfection remind me that life is ever new, every lovely, and ever surprising.

One way to give yourself the gift of a lasting bouquet is to take pictures. Petals fall and seasons change, but the beauty lives on long after the flower has gone to compost. I love to take pictures of flowers, capturing a moment as they bask in the light. A spray of plum blossoms caught in setting sun and reflecting the light as if they are living lamps, or the shadowed petals of an unfolding rose that creates a geometry of grace—every photo is a different expression of floral grace. I prefer capturing the blossoms in natural light, and have learned to look for nature’s “spotlight” for each scene.

Much depends on the camera as well as the lighting. It doesn’t take fancy equipment to capture a bit of lasting beauty. I still use my old Kodak EasyShare point-and-shoot camera, and because I have used it for so many years, I have learned its ways more deeply. I have learned more of the ways of flowers from it. One day soon I will be investing in cameras with more bells and whistles, but something tells me that I will want to keep my old camera available, even if it is held together with masking tape (actually, it IS held together with masking tape, as the battery compartment no longer stays closed on its own, thanks to the camera being dropped once or twice). That old camera is a friend, another eye that helps me see what I would otherwise miss. Almost every photo on my website has been taken on my trusty little digital camera. I revel in the bouquets the camera and I create together.

Timing is a big factor. Capturing the peak of the blossom or the perfect lighting is an essential part of the magic. I have a sunset view and at certain times of year the light of the lowering sun comes through the kitchen door and creates a space of light on my counter. I provide a background with a few simple props and place the opening rose in front of the complementary backdrop. Then I just chase the light as the sunset evolves. At other times of year my den skylight sends light down from on high, and my flowers bask in its spotlight for a few minutes of staged beauty.

Best of all is chasing the light and beauty outdoors. I go to local parks, botanical gardens, or a favorite lake in blossom time, and the magic unfolds under the ever-changing weather conditions. It’s such a joy to capture the perfection of spring blossom. I have learned to love the light as it dances with the flowers, caressing them with passing splendor. Light makes love with the earth, bathing it in beauty, coaxing the plants and flowers into being. The clouds and shadows reveal and hide; the early morning or waning afternoon casts a subtle glow that full noon is too harsh to reveal. Sunlight through the petals reveal secrets of the flower, offering a sense of another world more luminous and whole, more perfect in its glowing beauty than earth can fully bear.

Spring comes and goes fast in the South, as a warm day can open everything so quickly, and send it past its peak even more swiftly. Pacific Northwest spring blossoms linger in the grey coolness, but the southern sun can shorten the bloom time with a few days of unexpected heat. If I come upon a scene of peak blossom and glorious light, I take as many pictures as I can. I must capture the moment because it will not come again. Every year it’s different: same tree, same location, same spring blossom—yet never the same, and the photos are always different, day-to-day, season to season, moment by moment. Just like life: you can never repeat the moment, so keep your eyes wide open and your heart ready to receive. One day the cherry blossom is white. Two days later, it has deepened to pink. One day the crabapple buds are pink and red with promise, two days later they are a blanket of open white blossoms covering the tree. Two more days and they are petals falling and gone, swept away by the wind as a thunderstorm rushes in with a cleansing cold front.

The most artfully luminous photos become icons for me. One or two photos from a session will stand out because of a bit of light and form captured in random perfection. They represent something more than just the flower itself. It is as if there are more dimensions reflected in their beauty. As I have grown in my artistry, I have found certain ways of looking at the composition of flower and light to create something much more than a mere snapshot of something pretty. The photo itself is like a flower opening my eyes to another layer of beauty and meaning. For me, contemplating flowers has become a way of contemplating the mystery of life.

Whether I take a series of rose photos in afternoon’s fading light or go hunting at my favorite spring haunts for blossoms in the peak of their perfection, I go with an open heart as well as an open eye. Give yourself the gift of fragrant blossom and allow it to remind you of the inner dimension of the soul. A digital work of photo art, a painting that expresses your creative response to beauty, or just a lovely flower to scent your day and bringing beauty to your home; all of these remind you that eternity is calling to you through the lattices and windows of time and space. A big bouquet, a single rose, or wildflowers gathered from the side of the road—say it with flowers and take joy in nature’s sweet pleasures.

• Stop at a flower stand and pick your favorite bouquet. Now buy it and take it home and enjoy it. Or take your digital camera and go for a ramble in fields, forest, or garden. Take delight in the floral bounty that is always blooming for you.


Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.
John Ruskin

Once or twice I have been asked what the peacock is “good for”—a question which gets no answer from me because it deserves none.
Flannery O’Connor

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
Basho

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
Buddha

Beauty is reality seen with the eyes of love.
Evelyn Underhill

I like to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver

Spring—an experience in immortality.
Henry David Thoreau

Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.
Ellis Peters

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection not in words alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
Martin Luther

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.
The glory and freshness of a dream.
William Wordsworth

In the garden mystery glows
the secret is hidden in the rose.
Farid ud-Din Attar

We cannot discover ourselves without first discovering the universe, the earth, and the imperatives of our own being. Each of these has a creative power and a vision far beyond any rational thought or cultural creation of which we are capable.
Thomas Berry

We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion.
Ansel Adams

Cherry Blossoms
Setting aside my worldly affairs,
On the cherry-bloom I will gaze,
Every day till it withers; for
The flowers will last so few days.
Moto-Ori Norinaga

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed.
Henry David Thoreau

Your daily calendar tells you that everything is scheduled and accounted for—but your calendar cannot predict the unexpected. Even the most mundane days can hold surprises and gifts from the hand of God, if you are receptive to them. If you have eyes to see, you’ll recognize the loving Presence in all that is. Let the Divine romance you, surprise you, spread the treasures of creation before you. Then you will discover that Heaven is not somewhere far away, but here at work in this commonplace moment. Paper Valentines may come on February 14, but the Universe is sending you a living, loving Valentine greeting every day of the year.

You thought you were only running errands, but you ran into an old friend in line at the bank. It was just another ordinary day until that glorious sunset took your breath away. You ended yesterday in tears, but the sweet gift of sleep offered soothing relief and the next morning came with a clearer perspective The gloom of rain was chased away by sun shining through parted clouds. A smile, a red rose, a helping hand, a kind word, an unexpected encounter—Divine gifts surprise and delight.

You may have a sweetheart who will bring you hearts and flowers on Valentine’s day. Or you may be single and wishing for a Valentine greeting from a beloved you have not yet met. Whatever your life holds in the way of human romance, enjoy and express the Divine romance of living in such a beautiful and complex universe. Spend time with the Creator of Romance, allowing the loving Presence of God to comfort your soul. Choose to be compassionate and forgiving when you meet difficult people, recognizing that we are all works in process. Make an extra effort to let friends and loved ones that they are special to you.

Do something creative to satisfy your soul. Buy a bouquet and make a beautiful flower arrangement. Take a walk and bring a notebook with you for sketching or journaling. Write a poem. Build a birdhouse to welcome nesting birds this spring. Take artistic pictures with your digital camera and turn the best photos into homemade Valentine cards for friends and family. Try a new combination of accessories to freshen up a favorite outfit. Blend a perfume with fine essential oils. Make a delicious meal and share it with someone. Create a romantic atmosphere with candles, incense, and favorite music.

Most of all, cultivate a mindful awareness of the small gifts that life offers. Breathe in deeply, giving thanks for all life brings, good and bad. Breathe out the cares of life and that which no longer serves you. Be open and appreciate whatever comes as Life itself brings you unexpected gifts for Valentine’s Day—and every day of the year.


• Surprise someone you love with an unexpected gift—flowers, a card, chocolate—something simple to celebrate life together. Express your love of life in tangible ways: holding the door for someone, a smile, an extra large tip for a hard working waitress, a kind word, an anonymous Valentine for some lonely heart longing for a word of love.


The very commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery.
Gertrude Atherton

Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
Betty Smith

If we are rooted in the belief that everything God created is potentially holy, we have the capacity to notice that which is beautiful and holy in everyday life. Everything can be seen as a miracle, part of God’s plan. And when we can truly see this, we nourish our souls.
Rabbi Harold Kushner

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Kahlil Gibran

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Spiritual love is a position of standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.
Christina Baldwin

The more we have given to ourselves, the more we have to give to others. When we find that place within ourselves that is giving, we begin to create an outward flow. Giving to others comes not from a sense of sacrifice, or spirituality, but for the pure pleasure of it, because it’s fun. Giving can only come from a full, loving space.
Shakti Gawain

In the faces of men and women I see God,
and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street,
and everyone is sign’d by God’s name,
Walt Whitman

To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo

Insomuch as love grows in you so in you beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
Saint Augustine

If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more strong, more immortal—that is your success.
Henry David Thoreau

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heaven is throughout the whole world.
Jacob Boehme

Heaven is within, it revolves around us. It is the real state of Being.
Ernest Holmes

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.
Henry Beston

Though it is still winter, signs of spring are starting to appear here in Middle Tennessee. I was walking at the lake the other day and saw daffodils already out. It's way too early, as we can have hard frosts into March. But so lovely to see the bright yellow against the sere brown landscape. I look at photos of apple blossoms taken last spring, and their beauty lifts my heart on gloomy winter days.

I feel I have been in a long winter; a quiet but intense time of going within. I have missed blogging and connecting with you, dear reader. But a full time day job and continuing work on my new e-book, The Tranquil Heart: Inspired Choices for Challenging Times, have been the fierce focus through fall and winter months. More festive plans are afoot now as I prepare my finished book for publication and move on from my last assignment at a day job into a season of full time writing. I will be sharing more in the coming weeks about the rebirth of my writing career.

Today I want to express my gratitude for all who have commented or sent me messages of encouragement or reviewed my books on the many websites where they are available. I read your comments and take them to heart, and they have an influence on what I write and how I present it. I have been in an intense place the last few months, so thank you for your patience with my slow response to your letters and emails. I honor every person who cares enough to communicate, and will try to be more available now that my life is moving from winter into spring. I think we all, as a collective, found 2012 to be a challenging year. So many friends have experienced big transitions and unexpected changes in these times, as I have. I know my own spiritual life has deepened in the process, and I am excited about the new things I have to share with you, beginning with my upcoming e-book, The Tranquil Heart. More announcements will be forthcoming. Until then, I want to encourage you to make choices that will help you cope when things get intense in your life.

If you’ve been closeted indoors too long, your thoughts get as stuffy as the closed rooms you’ve been living in. It’s time to get out and let the wind blow through your hair, the sun shine on your face, and the fresh air invigorate your attitude.

Escape to the wild places to renew your spirit. Let the wind blow through your hair and whisper secrets of wild freedom to your heart. Enjoy being away from all man-made structures and in the midst of nature’s beauty. You’ll return to your daily life with a wider—and wilder—perspective.

Mountains, deserts, seashores, green fields, gardens—find a little bit of earth and spend some time on it, staring at the clouds, digging in the dirt, smelling the flowers, and just being with green and growing things out under the wide bowl of arching sky. Rejoice in nature and let it remind you that life is larger and airier and freer than the enclosed world you’ve been immured in.

Watch a squirrel scrambling through leaves, intent on her business. Listen to the returning birds sing their songs of joy. Enjoy the picture of a baby animal kicking up its heels in the spring sunshine. Look at the tight knobby buds just beginning to swell. Watch for the signs of returning spring, and make room for spring in your soul.

Remember that life is rich and full and mysterious. Nature shares secrets of renewal with those who will take time to listen to her. Seek out the wild places—mountain, forest, untamed shore, winding riverfront, vast desert—the primal creation that shimmers with living glory and reminds you that this is a very large and beautiful world. And in your own backyard, the changing seasons remind you that even the coldest winter will finally give way to spring.

Climb the mountains and get good tidings. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
John Muir

Spring flowers, autumn moon,
Summer breeze, winter snow—
When the mind is free from unnecessary thoughts,
Every season is just perfect!
Ekai

If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.
Henry David Thoreau

Earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

[This is an excerpt from my upcoming e-book, The Translucent Heart: Inspired Choices for Challenging Times]

When unhappy, one doubts everything. When happy, one doubts nothing.
Joseph Roux

When life feels dark and overwhelming, become aware of your thoughts and actively choose to think better thoughts. Get out of a negative mental rut and decide thatyou can choose your thoughts, and those thoughts can be focused on the good that is already in your life. It may be a simple thing, like the warmth of a cup of coffee or a helping hand or a soft bed to tumble into at the end of a long day. Stop going over why things went wrong or how someone hurt you or why life is hopeless.

When you find yourself dwelling on what’s wrong, look for hidden blessings in troublesome situations. Choose to move from negative stories into more positive and creative possibilities. Replace complaints with praise. When you find yourself thinking negatively, create a positive affirmation to replace the negative talk.

Notice when you begin to lose perspective. Sometimes going to bed earlier is the best antidote to a poisonous mood. Remember to take care of your body, for a brighter outlook can come after a good night’s sleep or a comforting meal. Take care of the physical body with rest, exercise, and good nutrition, and your psychic energy will improve as well.

Two Yiddish archetypes illustrate the difference between empowering high thoughts and disempowering low practice. First there is the Nebbish, a character that drains the energy from life, a person whose nothingness diminishes everyone and everything around. A classic description of a Nebbish says, “When a Nebbish leaves the room, you feel as if someone came in.” Jeanne Houston says in The Possible Human, “when all present human characterological types have gone the way of evolution and transmutation, the Nebbish will probably remain along with the cockroach and termite—mankind’s representative of the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy principle incarnate.”

We all have an innate talent for being a Nebbish. You’ll hear your own Nebbishness when you say things like “If I try, it won’t happen. If it happens, I won’t want it anyway or it will cost too much. Why bother? Nobody wants me anyway. And anyone who did want me around is probably not the kind of person I would want to be around. So, I don’t feel so hot, but why should I? I think I’ll just go home and eat ice cream and cookies, and flip the channels, though God knows there’s nothing on television worth watching.” The Nebbish is the personification of all the gloomy, sad sack, limp, drooping, whining, persistent thoughts that sap hope, drain energy, and make you feel that nothing is worth doing, even if you were capable of doing it, which of course, you are not, because you are nothing special and nothing in particular. This addiction to negativity and inertia is a familiar “frienemy” that erodes confidence with its continual vapid criticism and willed passivity.

Then there is the Mensch. A Mensch is alive on all levels, a complete person who walks into the room and makes everyone feel better. A Mensch not only sees the ideal in others, but also brings out that quality in each person he or she interacts with. A Mensch has staying power, is willing to laugh freely and feel sorrow deeply. An archetype of the human possibility in full blossom, the Mensch is an artist of high practice, expressing a whimsical, unconditional love for life. A Mensch is an authentic “person” in the larger sense of personhood; a social artist and a human being who is awake to beauty, wonder, and the art of high play.

There is power in recognizing the many facets of the self, and how the lower self and higher self are both part of your experience. A Nebbish lives in each of us, and can only be disarmed by love and laughter. A Mensch is the awakening of the possible self, the higher, more joyous and aware being that also resides in our hearts and minds. Being able to identify when you are sinking into Nebbishness is a marvelous, whimsical way of looking at those negative thoughts that can darken a day and make the world a gloomy place. A consciously chosen High Practice offers opportunity for growth and experimentation, leaving room for mistakes and mirth, wonder and love. The Mensch laughs at the Nebbish, but also understands what makes a Nebbish a Nebbish, and consciously chooses another way of being in the world.

Every day you have a choice between the low cockroach thoughts that scuttle around in dark places, seeing only the dreariness of life, and the high practice of seeing beauty, potential, and meaning in even the most commonplace life. You can fall into a Nebbish vortex with defeatist, critical, low thoughts, and watch your life spin down the drain. Or you can choose the daring high road of believing in yourself and others, staking your claim to the sunny side of the street, and being willing to accept and appreciate life in all its glory and sorrow. Nebbish or Mensch? It’s always your choice.

What kind of thoughts are you entertaining? Who would you want spend time with—and what mental commentary colors your day? That mental commentary, positive or negative, is the person you live with all the time. What attitudes make you feel that life is worth living and lift you into a clearer, more bracing atmosphere? What attitudes and mindset hold you back, locking you into a grey fog of negativity and nothingness?

Allow the light of love to transform your thoughts and illuminate your life. You can do this even on dark days. Meditate, pray an affirmative prayer, then release your cares to the loving hands of God. Believe that the Universe will make a way where there seems to be no way. Focus on what needs to be done in this moment, trusting Spirit to guide you.

Indeed, the Mensch is the ultimate musician, the Artist of the High Practice. The Mensch is ourselves whenever we go into the High Self. And having experienced ourselves as High Self, we are enchanted by the beauty and the wonder of this memory, by this glimpse of the possibility within.
Jeanne Houston

Life is like a 10-speed bike. We all have gears we never use.
Charles Schultz

A single sunbeam is enough to drive away any shadows.
Saint Francis of Assisi

Follow your bliss...if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
Joseph Campbell

Argue for your limitations and they are yours.
Richard Bach

It’s hard to defeat an enemy who has an outpost in your own head.
Sally Compton

Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed, so is the body.
Martin Luther

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
Aldous Huxley


Introducing an inspiring friend:

We are moving out of the Age of Information into the Age of Inspiration. It’s no longer practical to rely on sagging facts and the criteria of the past. Everything is changing too fast. This is the time to listen to Inspiration, the cutting-edge technology wired within you. It’s time to attend the instincts you were born with, your feelings, truth, and sense of purpose, and the boldest intelligence within you. You were born with wings. It’s time to take those feathers for a ride.
Tama Kieves

I first heard Tama Kieves at a writer’s conference in Nashville. Her first book was newly out, her career was just beginning to take off. She was one of the most inspiring and funny speakers I had heard in a long time. She will definitely help you get in touch with your inner Mensch. She also helps you laugh at your inner Nebbish. But most of all, Tama believes in your potential to change the world, to make a difference, to be a magical person expressing the fullness of your gifts in talents in exciting ways. Sign up for her monthly newsletter. I read it every month and am always reminded of what great writing and a willingness to cultivate higher thoughts can do. Her new book, Inspired and Unstoppable, is being released in August 2012. Look for it in bookstores.

Here is the address for her blog.
http://awakeningartistry.com/blog/
her website
http://www.awakeningartistry.com/

Tama Kieves has been featured on Oprah Radio and is the bestselling author of This Time I Dance! Create the Work You Love. She is a sought-after speaker and career coach who has helped thousands worldwide discover and live their true work in the world. Sign up at ThisTimeIDance.com to receive the free monthly email newsletter with Tama’s latest articles (and events). Look for her new book Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work (Tarcher/Penguin) in August 2012.

In a society focused on results and end products, it is easy to forget that you can’t create without going through a process of creation. You may say you have a certain goal or end result in mind, but often the actual work may take you in another direction. And many times a seemingly messy detour becomes the path to something unexpected and wonderful.

Sometimes the process includes unexpected time out. That time out may be a business setback that plunges you into deep waters as you work to survive and pay your bills. A layoff or hiring freeze means that the bright career plans are put on hold. The collapse of the music industry or tremendous changes in the book industry can mean that even successful writers and performers find themselves without a livelihood, having to reinvent not only their careers, but who they are and how to offer their gifts in a chaotic marketplace. Sometimes it’s a family emergency, and you may find yourself in the role of caretaker, putting your own life on hold while you walk with a loved one through the valley of the shadow of death. It might be a mistake you or someone else made, a change in market conditions, an unexpected emergency or health crisis. It could even be as simple as a creative project that didn’t come out the way you hoped, leaving you wondering whether you should try to salvage it or start all over again.

Take it one day at a time. Instead of trying to second guess the future, look at what you have right now. What can be accomplished today? Concentrate only on what you are able to do today. Do what you can and let go of trying to control the outcome. All you can do is do your best and leave the rest up to God. In most of the important things in life, we are dependent on the nature of creation and time, the grace of the Life Force flowing in us and carrying us through the events and processes of living.

In the larger perspective of life, eternal lessons teach us that trust and patience are required for the things that are really important. It takes time to raise a child, write a book, nurture a relationship, grow a career, and create a community. Think of a farmer patiently waiting for seed, soil, sun, and rain to do its work. The field must be plowed, the seed sown, the land fertilized and watered, the soil weeded, and the crop tended before it comes to full fruition. So it is with us.

Trusting the process is a form of letting go. You can try to predict and control life, but life is larger and more gloriously complex than the calculating planning part of the human brain can comprehend. When some plan or project is on hold, trust that it, too, is part of the process. It has been said that we make our plans—and God laughs. So why not laugh along? Or at least stop resisting and open your mind to receive new insights.

Trust that the goodness of life itself will lead you if you keep going. Trust the process of its unfolding. When a butterfly is working its way out of its cocoon, it is no kindness to cut the cocoon to make emergence easier. The struggle itself is an essential part of the process. When a human hand interferes with the process, the butterfly’s wings are undeveloped. It cannot fly. It dies. When the butterfly’s struggle is done in nature’s time, the emergence may last longer than our impatient hearts can stand. But when the butterfly finally emerges from this birthwork, it spreads its wings to dry, and then flies into its destiny. When you are stressed because your own process seems to be one of struggle and delay, remember the butterfly. Trust that a greater process is happening; that all this is working together for your good and your growth.

Whether you are creating a work of art or a life, trust the process. Let go of your expectations and let what you are doing lead you from one step to another. Do your best and leave the results to God.


Trust God from the bottom of your heart. Don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go.
Proverbs 3:5-6 THE MESSAGE

By going a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend on the corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution in the dark enigma but the one word, “Providence.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backward.
John Flavel

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves.
Eleanor Roosevelt

• Do a creative project, such as building model airplanes or knitting, and watch the process unfold. Meditate on the processes unfolding in your life.

Life on the farm is a school of patience; you can’t hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
Henri Fournier Alain

I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort.
Elizabeth T. King

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Chaung Tzu

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been.
William Hazlitt

The greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.
Carl Jung

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Nicholas Grau

Teach us, O Lord, the disciplines of patience, for to wait is often harder than to work.
Peter Marshall

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

On every level of life from housework to the heights of prayer, in all judgment and all efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are the sure marks of an amateur.
Evelyn Underhill

[excerpted from my upcoming e-book, Finding Serenity in Seasons of Stress]

Today is all you have. The past is behind you and the future is unknown. This moment is where life is lived, not in yesterday or tomorrow. Each day offers opportunities that will never come again. Your choices and decisions will color not only this day, but also cast their shadows on coming days. Remember, too, that by not making a choice, you are really making a choice, and that choice always has unforeseen consequences.

Procrastination, putting off till tomorrow what should be done today, steals precious opportunities. Procrastination produces guilt because you know you should do something but you don’t. Instead, choose to value your time by doing what needs to be done right now, and live fully in each moment.

Be aware that there are hidden depths and dimensions in each day, unique to that day. Yes, there will be other opportunities on other days, but this day lived well will reward you with its own special joys.

Procrastination is the thief of time.
Edward Young

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present.
Albert Camus

May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift

We look backward too much and we look forward too much; thus we miss the only eternity of which we can be absolutely sure—the eternal present, for it is always now.
William Phelps

To bring to the place where you live only the best and most beautiful—what a plan for life!
Howard Thurman

• Set a simple goal for today and achieve that goal. Reward yourself with a small pleasure when you achieve the goal.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie

The gloom of the world is but a shadow;
behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy.
Fra Giovanni

Lens

I should have brought my camera…
I saw a flash of yellow
dancing on a mound of pink
Perfect light
backlit the lovely wings
the butterfly
sipped the nectar
from a purple-pink thistle
and I
sipped the nectar
of the moment
A meditation
on light
color
movement
and ephemeral ecstasy
No camera to capture
the moment
only my eyes
seeing through the lens
of timeless awareness

(poem written September 17, 2010)

I went back into my archives and found this bit of wisdom. I always say that I have “good shopping karma” because I have always been able to find bargains and manifest just what I wanted or needed. I’m doing less shopping now because I’m working on applying my “good shopping karma” skills to creating a more sustainable life and career. Maybe some of these tips will inspire "good shopping karma" for you, too.

Here are some of my “good shopping karma” rules:
• Get to know the lay of the land. Cruise the entire store, not just one department, and perhaps other stores in the mall and big box stores.
• Educate yourself so you’ll know a good value when you see one. Remember that experience is education, too.
• Then watch the prices, look at the merchandise, keep an eye on what moves and what doesn’t move.
• Have an idea of what you want, but also be open to surprises and different options.
• Remember that the big box stores brag about their bargains, but often the full price department stores have better markdowns and take better care of their merchandise.
• Full price stores have better bathrooms, too—and details like that count! Shopping in a classier atmosphere is easier on the nerves, so you can concentrate on finding a quality product instead of sifting through inferior leftovers. Comfort and atmosphere are really important. You can’t think straight when you need to go to the bathroom.
• If you do go “junking” (Goodwill, cut rate stores, etc.) be mentally prepared for it. It takes a different mentality to sift through castoffs than to buy new. Bargain basements can be great—but like big box stores, highly overrated.
• You save more by buying one first class item that suits you perfectly than buying several second class items just because they’re “cheap.” Cheap is usually not a bargain—unless you are an experienced shopper with good instincts. Look for value.
• Bide your time and don’t be misled by early sales prices.
• Hold off till the right deal comes, and the right outfit appears on your radar.
• Don’t buy something you plan to diet into—it will hang in your closet forever.
• If you feel tired or anxious or indifferent, don’t buy, because you’ll regret it. Go home and take a nap.
• When the right price and product and timing come together, grab it. You’ll feel a rush of positive energy, the clothes will look good to you even in the fitting room mirror (where clothes always seem to look the worst). And it will feel right, as if you’re in the flow.
• When the flow is happening, ride the wave and shop. When good shopping karma kicks in, enjoy it while it lasts. When it’s not happening or the energy lets down, go do something else. The wave has washed onto the beach, and the window of opportunity is gone. Another wave will come again when the weather is right.
• Approach all shopping as a game, not a chore. If you’re playing a game, it’s okay to take risks and make mistakes and play. If it’s a chore, all you want to do is get it over with. Which means you’ll be too tired and cranky, so you’ll settle for something just to get the job done and get out of the store.
• Remember that even the big stuff is really small stuff in the cosmic scheme of things. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “There is no great or small to the One who knoweth all.”
• When in doubt, ask for guidance and listen to your intuition.
• If you can’t get the deal you want, be willing to walk away. There will always be another day to shop.

Finally, whether it is shopping in stores or shopping for information on the Internet, know when it is time to stop shopping and to start working on your dreams. Shopping (or surfing the Net) can be a distraction. Walk out of the store, turn your computer off, and go take one baby step toward the fulfillment of your dreams. Be proactive on your own behalf and create something that someone else will want to buy or enjoy.

Publishing resources:

I have found some new resources for those of you who are writers and considering e-book self-publishing.

The Book Doula
http://www.bookdoula.biz/
A doula (pronounced doo-luh) is an experienced professional who offers ongoing practical and emotional support to someone before, during, and after a birth. Dr. Liz Alexander offers her clients the same exemplary service as they conceive, grow, and birth their brainchild—a GOOD nonfiction book they can use to showcase their subject-matter expertise, boost business revenues, and future-proof their careers. She has a great blog and website that offers great insights on creating the book of your dreams.
She says, “Don’t write the book for where you are. Write the book for where you want to be.”

The Book Designer
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/
A great website and blog that offers help for publishers and authors who want to publish their own books and get to market with a great looking, properly constructed book, on time and on budget. The blog is written by Joel Friedlander, proprietor of Marin Bookworks in San Rafael, California. I check his blog on a regular basis.

Write It Forward
http://writeitforward.wordpress.com/
Bob Mayer is a NY Times Best-Selling multi-published author. This blog offers insight from a pro author who is now entering the e-book self-publishing world. Great entries that offer insight on the changes and challenges the publishing industry is going through right now.

Publishing Perspectives
http://publishingperspectives.com/
A great site for emerging trends in the book industry, especially the cutting edge changes and the e-book industry.

Additional blogs I check daily include:

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
The “poster boy” for indie and e-book publishing

http://www.idealog.com/blog/
Mike Shatzkin’s take on the book industry and e-books from a cutting edge industry viewpoint.

One can study a caterpillar forever and never be able to predict a butterfly.
Buckminster Fuller

Are you living the life that wants to live through you?
Parker Palmer

It is cicada time here in Middle Tennessee. First cicadas sighted in my yard on May 9. Little creepy crawlies and empty shells. Weirdness. Last time the cicadas were at a minimum when I lived in another part of town that did not have as many of these little critters. Now I'm in the cicada part of town.

The 13-year cicadas began emerging over a week ago, but five days of cooler weather left the little creatures hanging onto branches and plant stems, just waiting for warmer weather to return. Now a warm front is moving in, and the trees are alive with the sound of cicadas mating (the male "sings" to his lady love).

I like to imagine how it feels for the cicadas to emerge from thirteen years in the dark earth and to be born again into a new world of wings, wind, sun, eyes, and song (and sex!). What would it feel like to enter into a life so different than anything that could be imagined in the old life? While cicadas, with their little red eyes and buggy bodies may not have the elegance of the butterfly, they are still expressions of the Life Force and metamorphosis. I enjoy them as sign of abundance and nature's strange and wonderful generosities. What strange and wonderful metamorphosis have you been going through lately? Can you sense the new life that wants to unfold for you today?

Late May

Cicadas seem dizzy drunk with the heat and the love. Windshield splatters on the freeway. Cicadas! Cicadas! I took a photo of two cicadas mating, back to back, wings spread over each other.

They’re quiet at night, when it’s stormy and wet, or when it gets too cool for their comfort. Early in the morning the cicada whirring hum begins. It sounds like the aliens are landing as all the trees start coming alive with sound. Later in the day, the full chorus surrounds the house, and like a giant cicada peppergrinder, the sound becomes deafening.

Yet I find something wonderful in this expression of the Life Force. Happy cicadas mating and flying about, dizzy with love and life. Little eyes boggling at everything, especially a human being coming onto the horizon.

Bug-eyed with wonder, they don’t attack, they don’t run. The little cicada sits on the petunia plant, just being, just living. Alive in so many ways. I coo, “Cicada, cicada” as I point my camera and take a cicada portrait. Immortalized in digital media, now the little cicada decides it’s time to join its brethren. Wings whirr and the cicada lifts swiftly into the air. Cicadas! Cicadas!

End of May

Lots of little dead cicadas in my driveway, on my steps. (not to mention the splats! on my windshield). Guess they partied their brains out. They came into this world with that "OMG" look and seem to be leaving with the same. The party to end all parties, drunk with life itself. An orgy, not a potluck. What a long strange journey it's been. Thirteen years in the ground as a sap sucking grub. Then the nymphs seek the light, emerging from the dark underground world. Metamorphosis! Suddenly bingo bango: eyes, legs, wings, sun, wind, rain, storms, SEX! Mindblowing cicada sex leaves them reeling on the pavement, wondering what hit them.

Then a strange urge to dig a hole in some twig on a tree and lay eggs. Party's over. Drop dead with pleasure. Sated. And eventually little white grubs emerge and drop to the ground, going into the earth to spend the next thirteen years in solitary confinement sucking sap, waiting for the next party to begin.

I learned that the male cicadas will chirp (one got in my car). Someone told me that each cicada has its own unique chirp. Some are low, some are high. So what we're hearing is a cicada men's chorus in perfect harmony. I'm getting rather fond of these little critters (as long as they keep good boundaries) and feel as if there is something sacred and healing in the songs they sing. I like the spaceship landing sound they make early in the morning as they are tuning up. Somehow the sound from the distant trees blend so that you could close your eyes and imagine an alien spaceship landing. It is the Life Force expressing.

I love thinking about "Where were you 13 years ago?" 1998 was the year The Art of Abundance was published by Honor Books. I didn't even start coming to Center for Spiritual Living Nashville till 2003. Daddy and Marcia were still alive thirteen years ago. I was just starting to be weaned from depending too much on a dear friend. I recorded my 5 song Golden Moment demo. It was my best financial year ever--never been topped during the rollercoaster ride of the last decade. Music Row was still intact, not knowing that it would all implode soon. What a long strange journey it has been.

My mantra for the cicadas: "Cicadas! Cicadas! Crazy cicadas!"

Early June

Now the cicadas are getting quieter and quieter. Last week’s frenzy has mellowed. They are no longer flying into my face or zooming over the roof. I sat under a cicada-filled tree and saw that many were just sitting on the branches. There was a slightly fishy smell, so I moved away from them. I almost felt they were like party animals recovering from a hangover.

Cicada conversations overheard the other day: “The party’s over…” “Not now dear, I have a headache.” “ She just isn’t interested in sex any more, Harry. Always complaining about what I did to her!” “He still wants sex and all I want to do is dig a hole and lay my eggs. It’s hard to be in the mood when you’re hormonal and pregnant.”

End of June:

The last of the cicadas are gone. Branch ends litter the lawn, a sign that the eggs have hatched and the larvae are making their way back into the earth for another 13-year cycle. I miss the sound of that life force humming. As temperatures rise the usual summer cicadas will begin singing their love songs in the heat of late July and August. It will be a different song, beautiful in its own way.

I wonder where I will be when the next cohort of cicadas emerge thirteen years from now?