Soulshine

"Grace neutralizes anguish. We find comfort in our lives. We're satisfied with who we are and what we have, feeling surprisingly content. Life doesn't get much better than that." Melody Beattie, Make Miracles in Forty Days Miracles can be as simple as gratitude. And yet, for many of us, gratitude can be difficult. Life's been a hard ride through numerous pitfalls for the average person. But it has also been a joyride. How is it that we so easily forget this fact? Well, it has much to do with our perspective and our ability to find mental and emotional balance. What we focus our attention on GROWS . And the average person seems to focus their energies on whatever daily dose of poison comes their way. Let's look at a typical type of day. We're getting ready for work and we're already frustrated because our hair looks like "crap." No amount of gel or hairspray is enough to make us happy with how our head is looking in the mirror, and we'...

“When one finds his path, he cannot be afraid.  He needs to have courage to go astray.  Disappointments, defeats and despair are tools  God uses to show us the path.” Paulo Coelho, Life Every day we face bumps and roadblocks along our path in life. There are days when we stub our toes every few feet, and there are days when we wander off the path into flowerful meadows or refreshing streams. Likewise, there are days when we come to a fork in the path and we aren’t sure whether to go east or west. And there are times when our path seems to end and we’d much rather go backward than find our way forward into newness of life. People sometimes complain to me about the problems their paths produce. One day they learn they have diabetes. Another day their son is suspended from school. Still another day their spouse loses his job. And today they received a foreclosure notice. “Where is God in all of this?” they ask angrily. “Why is this happening to me? I go to church on ...

"My name is a holy word. Treat me like a gift from God above. You know my name is love” I‘m Talking, Holy Word I’m Talking was an Australian synthpop band that released one album back in 1984, Bear Witness . The album produced several hit singles Down Under, but failed to capture the rest of the world. One of the album’s Top 10 Aussie hits was “Holy Word.” The song is all about setting boundaries. It’s about self-respect. I immediately loved the song on first hearing it some 22 years after its initial release, and I‘ve wondered why it wasn‘t a huge hit in America. Every person on earth needs to understand, own, set and enforce personal boundaries. The concept of “my name is a holy word“ is true for all of us. Every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. Our individual names-- as varied and diverse as humanity itself-- all speak of God’s great love for everyone, with no exceptions. Our names joined together express the greatness of God’s love. To say “My nam...

 "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. O house of Jacob come, let us walk in the light of the Lord." Isaiah 2:5 It would be awesome to experience the day when all of the world would walk together in the light of the Lord. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus; people from every nationality, East to West and North to South; people of every persuasion, of every custom, of every belief; all joining hands in love and peace as the unalienable children of God. Imagine, as Isaiah says, nations never again raising their swords (or in modern terms, their AK-47s or nuclear bombs) against one another. Imagine your sons and daughters never having to “train for war again.” No more World Wars and no more wars between individual nations. No more wars within nations and no more wars within families. Imagine perfect peace; heaven on earth. If we ...

“Think of a rose from the time it is a tiny bud. As it opens to full flower, till the last petal falls, it is always beautiful, always perfect, always changing. So it is with us. We are always perfect, always beautiful and ever changing.” Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life Flowers bring beauty to life. Whether their colors are bright and radiant with sunlight, or dark and elegantly sensual. From daisies to roses, we see only beauty made vibrant when we gaze across a meadow. And yet, when we look at ourselves, we seldom see the same life-giving beauty. Each and every one of us is more beautiful than the reddest rose, but we fail to see that beauty. Our minds play tricks on our eyes. As we gaze at our reflection in a mirror, we see ourselves not as God created us, but as we-- and society-- have recreated us. We are wonderfully made by God. As Louise Hay says we are “always beautiful, always perfect,” or as I like to say we are "perfectly imperfect." But society tells...

“When you give up your own truth to win at someone else’s game, everyone loses.” Stephen C. Paul, Illuminations People-pleasing is how many of us give up our truth to win at someone else’s game. We may see self-compromise as a win-win situation. After all, we will most likely get what we want, but as Stephen C. Paul says, in reality, we lose and so does everyone else.  We usually engage in the folly of people-pleasing for one of two reasons. Some of us people-please because our self-esteem is poor and we mistakenly believe that others will only like us if we bend over backwards to please them. Then there are those of us who people-please, or actually prostitute ourselves, simply to get what we want from others, or to ensure that we can keep on doing whatever we want without any interference. Either way people-pleasing is nothing more than manipulation of others at the expense of honesty and our personal integrity. It’s a game we never win. People-pleasing spreads through many...

“Stories are painted in the lines of your face.” Magne Furuholmen, White Canvas Wow! I love the idea that stories are painted in the lines of our faces. This is so true. Picture the face of a grandparent: There are magnificent stories assigned to each line, each wrinkle, each cell. Some of these stories are joy-filled and some are tear-filled. Yet they are all essential to the life of the person who lived them. Every facial line helps to construct the character and the integrity of each individual and, collectively as a people, every line helps to tell the historical story of a generation. I often wish I had asked my grandparents about their youth. It must have been fascinating growing up in the early 20th Century when technology was first beginning to boom: Motion pictures (first silent then talking); radio; international telephone service; phonograph records; the evolution of automobiles, trains and airplanes; and the birth of television, just to name a few. In 1939, it must ha...

“You know I always had the strength to fight, but I got tired of the wars at night. Thinking they would end if I gave in, but I wasn't strong enough to let you win.” Morten Harket & Havard Rem, To Let You Win* Many of us have a hard time letting someone else win, even if we know deep-down that the other person is right. We think we are proving our superiority by always being right, but nothing could be further from reality. We are actually projecting our devastating feelings of inferiority to everyone around us. People who insist on being right all of the time do it for a reason. Their self-esteem is below poverty level. If they have to admit they are wrong about anything, they fear facing total annihilation. The song “To Let You Win,” by Norwegian Pop group A-Ha, goes on to say “I thought you couldn’t love a man who had lost.” This points to the inner-motivator, the real problem behind the need to always be right: the human ego. Our ego tells us we have to be perfect t...

“A grievance is when your ego hijacks your mind, takes you to hell, demands a ransom and leaves you there (in hell) anyway.” Robert Holden, Shift Happens Everyone gets hurt. Accept it. We all face betrayal, gossip, lies, infidelities and the pain of being victimized by people-- even those we once loved and trusted. Asking “why me?” is never a solution. It’s pointless and so is harboring a grudge. A grudge or resentment is a vial of emotional poison. When we allow personal wounds to fester into resentments, we betray ourselves by swallowing the emotional poison we‘ve concocted to kill our perpetrator. Or as Robert Holden says, “Carrying a grievance is like carrying a grenade that blows up in your mind” everyday. Holden goes on to say that creating a grievance is being “kidnapped by your own ego, sitting in hell hoping the ‘bitch’ or ‘bastard’ who is the cause of the grievance ends up in hell, too. The great hope is you can both live unhappily ever after.” Truer words are hard to come ...

"Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you... When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering." Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements Many of us seem to take life very personally. Someone can look at us the wrong way and our guts immediately tighten. "What did I do?" races through our minds. Our spirits plummet and in many cases our day is damaged. Think about it. How often has someone said or done something that we immediately took personally? Let's examine the following scenario as an example: We're on the way to the movies with our best friend, Paul, when his cell phone rings. We don't know who he's talking to, but he eventually says "Thanks. I'm glad someone in this world appreciates me." Alarms go off in our heads: "What did he mean by 'I'm glad someone appreciates me'? I'm his best friend. I appreciate him. I do all sor...

“You can’t lose someone who truly loves you, and you can’t hold captive someone who doesn’t.” Anonymous If we are uncomfortable in our skin, we will often be fearful of losing people we “think” we love. I say “think” for a reason. When we are uncomfortable with ourselves we are often attracted to toxic people. We mistake the toxic-- usually addictive-- attraction for love. When we make this mistake we are actually fearful of losing the poison that has nearly killed us.  We become anxious and we search for ways to manipulate and control the other person so we can keep a tighter hold on our prisoner. I believe our grip tightens because we mistakenly believe that if we lose this person, we will lose ourselves, our chance for happiness and our lives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We can’t lose ourselves by losing another person unless we have long ago abandoned ourselves by fading into the other. We can’t lose our chance for happiness either, because we never had a c...

“Forgive those who take from you, or walk all over you. They are your biggest teachers. Take your power back from them and lovingly set them free. Let them go by releasing your neediness for their love. Love yourself instead!” David Elliott, Healing Forgiveness is difficult for many people because we fail to understand ourselves, let alone the persons we believe have harmed us. And so through building resentments, we hold tight to our inner-pain while daily giving away our emotional power to those who have hurt us. It’s much easier to forgive when we understand why we are holding on to the hurt. We think it‘s all about the other person’s behavior. Truth is, that’s only a small part of what’s holding us hostage. The larger part of the problem is all about us. As David Elliott says in his book Healing , we need to release our neediness for the love of those we are at odds with; we need to stop demanding that they give us something that they don’t have to give-- or that isn’t ours to d...

"In my mind, I have shot you and stabbed you through the heart, I just didn't understand the ricochet is the second part... and the more I try to hurt you, the more it hurts me... the more it backfires." Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, Revenge Somehow we humans mistakenly link revenge with a sense of redemption. Someone has hurt us, and immediately we want to rescue ourselves from what has happened. We want to quickly redeem ourselves, meaning we want our power back; the personal power that we think we have lost to our perpetrator. We want the easy way out of our humiliation and pain, and that easy way is too often revenge.  Revenge is the easy way out because our other choice would be to face our feelings of betrayal, hurt and loss; but we don't like to do that. It's too difficult and it takes too long. Besides, we might have to face the fact that we were in someways an accomplice to what happened to us. We might have to own up to our role in this great traged...

"Be the flame, not the moth." Heath Ledger, Casanova In the 2005 film Casanova , the infamous 18th Century ladies man (Heath Ledger) befriends Giovanni Bruni (Charlie Cox) by offering him a bit of advice concerning women. First, he tells Bruni to stop moping around women. After all, misery isn't very attractive. Then he says "If you want to be loved, you have to be worth loving... Be the flame, not the moth." There is some excellent relational wisdom in Casanova's advice. First, if we want to be loved, we have to believe we are lovable. We need to do a good job of loving ourselves. This requires letting go of any "poor me, I'm not worthy" moth-like attitude we may find comfortable. Moping about not being good enough isn't attractive to anyone. No one finds the love of their life through misery and moping. Misery begets misery-- and maybe a few flies! Sometimes we mistakenly confuse looking pitiful with looking cute. If this is the case...

“Friendship... is the comfort of feeling safe with a person.” Dinah Maria Craik , A Life for a Life What greater comfort can there be than feeling safe with another person? None-- aside from feeling comfortable with yourself. People often wonder how to discern if a friendship is healthy or toxic. Understanding how we feel around each person we call “friend” is a key indicator of a healthy or unhealthy relationship. Next time we’re around certain friends, let’s tune-in to how we feel... As we’re walking to the market, we run into Janet. We feel “on-guard“ as our gut tightens. We feel unsafe. As she’s talking, we quickly realize how subtly critical Janet is, and we’re afraid she may bite us with her words at any second. We feel uncomfortable until she heads on her way. The next day at work, we notice that when our “friend” Tim enters the conference room, we feel all of the positive energy rush out the door before it closes behind him. His brooding expressions zap us with emotional...

“You know, I got my walls, Sally calls them prison cells... I've got the chains, I got the warning bells I sit so snug and isolated alone in the modern world... I’m so scared and isolated in the modern world.” Rick Springfield, Human Touch One afternoon I was channel-surfing when I came across Rick Springfield talking candidly to an interviewer on VH1. Springfield made a stunning confession that hooked my attention: Much of his life, when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t like what he saw. This was especially true for him during his celebrity heyday. I was shocked. Back in the 1980s, Springfield was a superstar in both television and music. He played a popular character on the soap opera General Hospital, and he had mega-hits with pop songs like “Jesse’s Girl” and “Don’t Talk to Strangers.” Women chased him, his record albums registered double platinum sales and his concerts were sell-outs. How could this man who had looks, talent, charisma and success not like himself? T...

God's love is completely unconditional; meaning God's love for us looks beyond our behavior. Think about it. No where is this more true than in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The father loves the son despite his behavior. There is nothing the son can do to lose his father's love. And this is shocking to us because at no point in this parable is the prodigal's behavior "good" or acceptable according to our human egos. First, the prodigal son asks his father for his inheritance. We all know that no son or daughter receives an inheritance from a parent until the parent has died. But this son isn't willing to wait for his father's death. He wants his money and he wants it now. That must have been devastating to his father, who had to face the fact that his son valued money more than he valued the life of his own father. The father's love is so great for his son, however, that he is willing to give the young man the money he has requested. Secon...

“Unless you are happy with yourself, you will not be happy.” Robert Holden, Happiness Now Almost everyone has searched for the elusive treasure we call happiness. Most of us were taught that this treasure exists outside of us, and we’ve searched to find our happiness in people, places, things and careers.  A few of us were taught that this treasure box actually exists inside of us, but we were also taught that someone else holds the key to our happiness-- and we must find that someone. So we’ve spent much of our lives scavenger-hunting for the key we already unknowingly possessed. In our quest for happiness, some of us have dug deep to find the “treasure” that is Mr. or Ms. Right. Once he or she was unearthed, we tried even harder to excavate our “treasure” from them-- only to come up empty because people are not the key to our happiness. Others of us have spent big bucks on clothes, cars and trips. We’ve felt exhilarated by our purchasing power, but when we’ve tried to excavat...

Autumn in the desert-- and the coyotes are mysteriously making their presence felt. Suddenly they are more visible and audible, especially from dusk to dawn. I have no doubt that their inner-clocks—alerting them to winter’s approach-- have them stirring in their annual autumn ritual preparations. We humans have our own annual ritual preparations for winter, but I don’t believe many of us rely on our inner-clocks to get us motivated. We’re too intellectual for that nowadays. In addition to our calendars and electronic schedulers, we have advertisers to tell us it’s time to buy warmer clothing, time to bring the car in for it’s winter check-up and time to get ready for the holidays. It seems with all of our headiness, we have lost touch with our inner-clocks. Most of us are probably disconnected from them completely. Well, maybe it’s time we took some lessons from the coyotes. After all, God gave us inner-clocks (for humans, a sort of gut-intelligence) to guide us. These clocks alert...

Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." Jesus said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her."   Gospel of Luke 10:38-42 There are many Marthas and Marys in this world. Unfortunately, Marthas tend to outnumber Marys by about three to one. What’s even worse is that many of us would not be reading this today if we were Marys. But we aren’t. We are Marthas and for many years Martha has been our patron saint. Many of us have done a great job of emulating her. We’ve worked hard at controlling people, pets, time, calories, jobs and the really big one: Yes, like Martha, we’ve even tried hard to control God. In Luke's gospel story, It's hard to ignore how bossy Martha is in demanding that Jesus tell Mary to get o...

“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus Christ, Gospel of Matthew “How many loaves do you have?” may not seem like a very significant question, but it uncovers a great deal of truth about human nature. First, it challenges our honesty. When we are asked how much do we have of anything, a caution alarm goes off in our guts. “Do we tell the truth or don’t we?“ dashes through our minds. If we tell the truth, we might have to share and deep down we are afraid to make ourselves that vulnerable. We may suffer from a sense of lack; of always believing that there may not be enough left for us if we share what we have with others. So we will sometimes fudge on the truth or even say “Sorry, I’m all spent out,” knowing we‘ve passed a lie through our teeth. Then there are situations where the idea of sharing causes a self-righteous streak to kick-in. “I worked hard to get what I’ve got and I’m tired of sharing my hard earned dollars with bums who don’t want to work!” may come roaring off our tong...

“All you really want is to be loved and accepted for who you are.” Stephen C. Paul, Illuminations We all have basic inherent human needs and it’s essential that we honor them. Human growth requires more than bread and water, more than exercise and sleep, more than warm clothing and a comfortable chair. It requires more than sexual ecstasy and intellectual enlightenment. It even requires more than a spiritual connection to a Higher Power. The most basic human need, the one that must be fulfilled for healthy human growth, is the need to be loved and accepted for who we are. There are too many of us in this world who have never known the essential bliss of being loved and accepted for who we are. We’ve known the desire since we were old enough to reach out and hug our parents. We’ve longed to hear the words “I love you just as you are,” and we’ve longed to feel the warmth of such unconditional acceptance through the embrace of another. But it’s rarely-- if ever-- happened. As children...

“The Chance to start over is all that it takes. You want to believe it. You know that it‘s true Your life is a canvas, the colors are you.” Magne Furuholmen, White Canvas * Authenticity is about allowing our true colors to shine on the canvas that is our life. For some of us it’s about getting our lives back-- taking back our power. Many of us spend a lifetime giving our personal power away to family, peers, society and religion. Giving our personal power away is like giving our paintbrush to another person and allowing them to paint our self-portrait. Many of us have done this. We’ve abandoned ourselves and given someone else the right to decide who we should be. We’ve become the nurse Mom always hoped to be herself, or the soccer player who “makes” Dad happy. We’ve dressed a certain way to please Sister Mary-Mary. Or we’ve stuffed our feelings because society says we aren’t allowed to show weakness. And many of us have gone to church out of “obligation,” not because we love God...

“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude; love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in right.”   1 Corinthians 13 One thing I’d like to add to Paul’s list of what love does or doesn’t do is this: I believe love does not practice avoidance. Avoidance is a major problem in many people’s lives and relationships. We avoid looking at bills that we’d rather not be responsible for paying; we avoid medical attention for the sharp pain in our side because we’d rather not know if it’s something serious; and we avoid telling our deepest desires and needs to loved ones for fear that we aren’t worthy of having our needs met by them. When we practice avoidance we are like fugitives—sometimes within our own families. We are always on the run and we are on constant alert 24 hours a day because we have to keep one step ahead of the problems we choose to resist. Eventually we fi...