Home is Best

At week's end, the doorbell rang. It was my son, returned home from Outward Bound. He does seem changed somehow. We shall see if it lasts. He even brought his sister a present of candy! And he let us hug him! He came up to me, and told me he'd like to plan some family outings with his sister. I acted calm, and said "sure!" Time will tell, time will tell...for now, I am just happy he is home.

The Sound of Silence

Having experienced a bout of laryngitis this past week, I have had on my mind the sound of silence. Oxymoronic as it is, the phrase also speaks loudly of paradox. How can sound be silent? How does silence have any sound?
With so much change swirling around my life (yet once again, or still, whatever), I do find myself longing for silence. That does not only mean silence from the outer world. It also means silence inside of myself. I am not always handling the change well. I am being loud, when it would be better to be quiet. I am being quiet, when it would be better to speak out. I haven't really resolved this. I am simply recording my present state of mind. In that sense, this is more truly a diary entry than a blog post. SO be it. I am not in the mood to care what anyone else thinks about what I have to say. I don't mean that in any belligerent sense. I am tired of justifying my emotions, to myself or to others. I don't want to explain anything. I don't want to hear anything. I crave silence. In silence, I could think. In silence I could figure out what to do next. Or could I?

Climb Every Mountain

Safety Net

There is a line in A Course in Miracles that says, "In my defenselessness, my safety lies."
This has always been a tough one to accept. How can you be safe if you do not defend yourself when necessary? Certainly that is not the predominant world view. I admit, I ponder this statement quite a bit. I even evoke it in order to banish fear. Amazingly, the very act of saying this seemingly paradoxical sentence is sometimes enough to evoke a feeling of calm and peace!
What is safety anyway? When we are safe, we tend to take it for granted. When our safety is threatened (and let's face it, mostly it's about physical safety), we know it! It is a very real feeling, and the feeling is - you guessed it - FEAR.
So, then it all comes back to the basic tenet of ACIM (doesn't it always?) - which is that there are really only two emotions, Love and Fear. Whatever is not Love, is Fear. Leaving aside your objections to this reductivism, if I, in a time of unsafeness (real or perceived), choose to invoke LOVE, what happens? Well, Love in its pure form must be defenseless. We cannot truly love when there are any kind of barriers. Therefore, we love and we are safe. In our defenselessness, our safety lies.
How's that for being vigilant, World?