The strength of one's personal belief creates many things in one's life.

Too long in my head forgeting about the strength and joy of the heart...

I sit in front of my computer this morning with a cup of tea. I am allowing my heart to be opened. I don't know how it slowly gets closed but so often it does. Sometimes I think there is so much to love in my life that my tiny little heart can't hold it all, all of the time.

This weekend it sprung right open once again watching Zander play his first ever baseball game! I have held this dream in my heart for him since soon after he first came into my life. We took him to the batting cages for the first time at six years old when my Dad came to visit us in Portland. That little boy could hit! Not afraid of the ball at all. Since that time summers have been spent visiting his mother so he has not played league ball. This summer, we are all together. This summer he gets to play & it is SUCH a joy to watch him. He is a little behind in fielding skills and understanding but the boy can still hit!

I miss Kaeli, certainly don't see or hear from her enough but 18 is a fickle age. I remember it all too well, so I understand.

Gideon and I, well, we have our moments where the neediness is just too much but for the most part... we adore each other all of the time. This morning we danced around the living room to John Lennon Pandora Radio. Such a sweet moment. I have to say one of the best parts about being a Mom is watching Grandparents, Aunts & Uncles share in Gideon's life. Nothing like it. Sure hope to be an Aunt soon myself!

And Jason, my love. What a beautiful patient soul that man has. I am surely grateful that Creator saw fit for us to find one another. My life, my heart, has been infinitely blessed in knowing him.

So, this morning, as the light rises in the east and shines through the leaves in the trees. My heart is opened and grateful. May each day hold such promise & my heart see that within each morning.

So here's an idea... many people are looking to adopt children. Russia has many many children needing homes but, from what I have heard/observed, many of the children have emotional attachment trouble because of the conditions/care in the orphanages.

It's hard to put into words for me but I would love to see a Non-Profit form to educated & improve existing orphanages while also founding new ones. The goal would be to make adoptions happen faster and help provide the children with the quality care they deserve.

By the wisest of beings a message has been repeatedly sent to me this week.

Speak your truth, without apologies...

This can be a difficult task for someone so eager to please everyone else. It has been a long walk learning to let go of past conditioning. When you are learning about life little rivers of synapses form in your brain until eventually they are so trained that it takes conscious will to pull those thought patterns in a different direction. This is where affirmations come in handy. You are in essence re-training your brain's pattern of thought.

When you are in a room filled with spirit and people exclaiming God's glory through out your young life... you miss it when life shifts. You miss the comfort of someone else telling you what to believe. You miss the ease of someone telling you what is your truth...

It is a brave thing to face the world empty handed. To say to God/Creator, I believe in you, I know you are there but these teachings in the bible are often not consistent with the loving being I know you to be.

I tell you this, if anyone tells you they know the truth absolutely they are lying. No one knows any better than you yourself know and no one can know you like you can know yourself.

I propose a church of gratitude be formed. A church spent entirely in being grateful.
Ahhhhhhhhhh, it would be nice, aye? Singing joyfully without the constant guilt of not living up to someone's standards.

Finally, it is better to be "good" for the sake of being good rather than being "good" for the sake of earning a place in heaven. A place in heaven is such a limiting motivation and Creator, Creator is limitless.

The way the sunlight hits her hair and she smiles at Gideon, I see my mother... and my heart aches that some time she will be gone. This could be her last moment with me or my son... Refocusing those eyes and thoughts I look at my son and think that someday he will be grown, someday I won't be here with him in the physical form... He will grow and change, as will I. Buddy, our dog, comes tumbling up for a pat on the head. I think it a wonder that these hands have touched him through so many phases in life and that some time, much sooner than I would like, he will be gone from this earth as well.

Back to these hands... how they have aged...

Why, why is it I am stuck thinking this way lately. Everything is so beautiful but painfully so.

As I type this I am reminded of the Stevie Nicks song, Landslide... can I handle the seasons of my life? I have barely left the season of maiden and I mourn for it so... I hope my spirit and joyfulness can stand the tests of time.

That is it. I just had to get some of these thoughts out.

You may not know it from observing me on a daily basis, I am non the less, obsessed with spirituality. If I could spend my entire day researching and practicing different forms of religion it would bring me great joy. Most of this, however, goes on in my head and no one ever sees or hears it. My dear partner brought this to my attention last night. If I want to teach our children the depth of spiritual searching this world has to offer, well then I better find some way of communicating my search of it.

Since my exploring outside the Christianity box (a story which I will come to at another time.) I have so far found a simple truth... that all religions are connected and share many of the same root values or ideas that have been interpreted differently through out time. Escentially all of these ideas about God are right which makes them all wrong.

Humans have created words and language to describe the things around them. By labeling something we create a false sense of security that we know what that particular thing is simply because we named it. However "seeing things like a child" means to not label all of these things around us. To see the world as mysteriously as it truly is. ""I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3.

Now is my time to flower. Time to bloom. Not in the ways of the worldly efforts as I once sought, but in the quiet unfolding ways of the nurturing mother. In the slow, concentrated, daily effort, with each conscious moment & movement unfolding each delicate perfect petal.

I am re-reading/absorbing Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. What an inspiring book! He opens with words on the beauty and teachings of the flower.

"An Excerpt from Chapter One
The Flowering of Human Consciousness

Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years. The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet—if a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it.

Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word “enlightenment” in a wider sense than the conventionally accepted one, we could look upon flowers as the enlightenment of plants."