Daily Practice of Joy

31.3.20

Today is the last day of March. It is the first day of the Stay at Home restrictions here in North Carolina. And it the last day of this month’s practice of presence — which was to take a picture every day and be really present to Love, wherever I might find myself.

When I began this practice, I certainly had no idea that I would end up here in Western North Carolina — a place that is to be my temporary home for almost four months.

You see, to stay at home, you have to have a home to stay in. I don’t have a home. (Sometimes when I tell people I’m a nomad, that I am “Intentionally homeless”, that I live home-free, they nod and smile and still — four years down the road — they ask, But where do you live?)

I have had no home and many temporary homes for four years now.

But right now, when we are all being asked to stay at home, right now when it counts — I have a home. And it will be the perfect home for the next three months. . .just as it has been for the last three weeks!

To say that I am grateful would be a HUGE understatement. Honestly, it couldn’t have been scripted better in a Hallmark movie. To find this place in this sweet town in a lovely quiet neighborhood where I can walk and walk and walk surrounded by mountains. Well, lesson learned. I could never have planned this. I had to get out of the way and let Love take the wheel for this to happen. And the real joy is that my presence here in this little cottage is a blessing for the person who owns it as well — during a time when he would not have had any other income from it!

My mother used to say that what blesses one blesses all. I’m living here at this time in the world as proof of that adage.

I have come to know this neighborhood well over the last three weeks of walking walking walking. Which is to say I’ve come to know the flowering trees and the flower gardens and the front yards and the dogs on porches. My practice of presence through seeing has been easy, because my walks are the great joy of my days.

Yesterday I passed a lilac bush just starting to bloom. Lilacs are one of my two favorite flowers. I will go back and visit that bush every few days now just for the joy of being around lilacs for a few minutes. Later I passed two peony bushes. My other favorite flower. They won’t bloom for a while now, but I am so looking forward to visiting them and seeing their progress.

I always love being around flowers of any kind, but I adore spring flowers in particular. And yet now that we are all appreciating life so much more deeply these days. I am constantly filled with wonder and gratitude and joy at each and every flower! They all seem as glorious as lilacs and peonies now. All pure joy and beauty.

Like the beautiful tree in this photograph.

When I walked past this beautiful tree, I took this picture because it captured something about this whole month for me. It looked like the entrance to a Secret Garden. And in a way, I feel that’s what I’ve found here in Western North Carolina. My own little Secret Garden where I can do my work for the world. Because that’s what I am doing everyday. In prayer, in meditation, in writing, in blogging, in my work for my clients, in my work for my “book launch” in two weeks — I am working for the world.

What do I mean by that? Loving the world. Loving the world with every fiber of my being. Loving everyone in the world. And letting Love guide all my thoughts and actions.

So I will take this practice of being present by seeing deeply with the eyes of Love with me into next month’s practice, just as I brought each previous month’s practice into this month.

In January, I practiced presence.

From that I learned what I needed to be more present: I needed to learn how to pause. Thank goodness for that practice, which is helping me so much right now as I am paused off the road for the next three months.

While learning to pause, I realized that I needed to give myself more joy-filled reasons to pause. And that’s what this month’s seeing through the eyes of Love did. It gave me reason after reason to pause and see deeply.

And now I get to practice being. Being right here. Right now. In this world. At this particular moment in time.

So tomorrow, as April begins, stay tuned for Be 2020. As always, I hope we’ll learn these practices together.

But today, I leave you with this photo of my little Secret Garden — and some beautiful quotes from the book, The Secret Garden. It’s probably time for us all to read this classic book again. Its message is perfect for all of us right now.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of seeing through the eyes of Love this month. See you tomorrow in April with LOVE!

From Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden:

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done-- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”

Today let us all tend our roses in Love so no thistles can grow.

And here’s today’s #LoveViral To Do list that will help you tend all the roses in your Secret Garden: #LoveViral To Do List #6

30.3.20

I’ve become obsessed with this cool little iPhone trick, because it captures how I love to see flowers. I love to look deep into their souls, because when I do, I feel overwhelmed by gratitude and joy.

I feel like I repeat this Iris Murdoch quote over and over again: “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to think we have such things about us.”

That’s how I feel when I see flowers — and especially spring flowers. OMG! I want to say to everyone I see. Why aren’t you just jumping up and down at all this beauty!?

On my now regular neighborhood walk in this place where I know no one — and am not likely to meet anyone because we’re all staying six feet away and there’s no place to go to chat with anyone — my friends are the flowers. Just up the street is a bed of tulips and I stop and say hello to them morning and evening. They are so HAPPY! So overjoyed that this is their moment in the sun. They look up at me with their smiling faces and of course I can’t help but smile back.

Yes, it could be said that I have a mania for flowers. And that’s not a bad thing. . .until it is.

And so today’s musings on lessons from nature is about when enough becomes too much.

Most people have at least heard about tulip mania — a time during the Dutch Golden Age in the early 1600s when the rage for tulips (which had just been introduced to Europe the century before from Turkey) got out of control. The prices went up and up and up until they collapsed dramatically in February of 1637. This was the first such financial collapse of a speculative market. . . but not the last.

If you look up the world mania, here are its two major meanings:

1. mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity. (madness, derangement, insanity, lunacy)

2. an excessive enthusiasm or desire; an obsession. (frenzy, hysteria)

So, a mania for football or cars or flowers or travel is one thing. But a mental state of excessive euphoria and delusions is quite another.

From a human perspective perhaps, But from the perspective of this poor planet that we have beaten into submission, perhaps they amount to one and the same thing.

We find something we love and we love it into extinction. Birds that no longer exists because the mania for their feathers eradicated them. Ecosystems eradicated because humans moved in. (Humans have caused an average of two botanical species a year to go extinct in the last 300 years!) We have eaten whole herds off the face of the earth. From the earth’s perspective, any mania is a straight road to ruin.

And now we’re at a huge moment of reckoning. A moment of looking at our entire global way of living

I thought everyone knew about the so-called Doomsday Clock. But when I mentioned it recently to a good friend, she’d never heard of it. So in case there are some of you who haven’t either, here’s what it is: Created in 1947 by the University of Chicago scientists who developed the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Doomsday Clock uses the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

Each year it is updated by a board that includes 13 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.

On January 23, 2020, this board determined that the world is now 100 seconds to midnight

They wrote a long letter to the leaders and citizens of the world, which began: “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.”

At the same time as they wrote this, the current global crisis was beginning. Because of which we have been given the opportunity to think long and hard about what each of us is willing to do about this AND to see what happens when we humans have to stop our “usual behavior”.

We’ve all seen photos of the clear water in Venice — a city so polluted that is literally stinks in the height of summer. We’ve seen the clear skies over China. When I was in China, I flew over the entire country and never once saw anything on the ground. And when the planes I was on landed, you saw the earth about 10 seconds before the wheels touched down. This was not cloud cover. It was pollution.

A recent study showed that, had more of China been locked down, another 80,000 lives could have been saved by reducing pollution!!

Take a look at the air quality in big cities that are in lockdown or shelter in place around the world, and compare them with this same time a year ago — the numbers are stunning. Believe me, the birds and plants and animals are reveling in this.

But you don’t have to think big picture to see the results. Think about how much litter you see in your area on a regular basis. With no parties happening, no bars open, fewer people eating fast food on the road, less litter. No bottles and cans that will lie there forever or be washed into a watershed.

Enthusiasm is a beautiful thing! Right now jigsaw puzzle makers all over the world are rejoicing because we’re in the middle of a puzzle frenzy. As a lifelong jigsaw puzzler, whenever I stop long enough, I always have a puzzle going. I LOVE jigsaw puzzles. Always have. Well now my favorite puzzle supplier has a ten-day wait for puzzles and has had to hire 30 new employees. I’m sure they are grateful for this puzzle boom! And I’m very happy for them, but not so happy that finding a puzzle has become suddenly challenging.

And that’s how it works. Happy. Not happy. Boom and bust. Because what happens after the mania for jigsaw puzzles end and it’s just people like me again. Bust follows boom follows bust follows boom. We think this is the norm.

But this cycle has to end.

How? Well, back to my friend the tulip.

There are two kinds of flowers we humans plant: Annuals or perennials. Annuals have to be replanted each year. Perennials come back every year.

So which ones are tulips? In their natural environment, tulips are perennials that come back year after year. But sometimes, when they are grown outside their natural climate, the don’t come back as well, getting smaller and smaller each year.

In other words, plants do best growing where they are meant to grow. And when they are where they are meant to be they do what they are meant to do. Bloom!

It’s time for us all to take a look at where we’re meant to be and what it means to each of us to bloom. Can we live more simply? Can we be grateful for what we have without always needing to have, be or do more? Can we care for the resources we have instead of hoarding too much or discarded the half-used? Can we look at one another — people, birds, plants, animals, fish — as our friends instead of our competitors or supply chain? These are some of the questions that we all have the time to think about right now.

Sure. They’re big questions. But we’re at 100 seconds to midnight. So it behooves us to start coming up with some answers.

But how can we change what has always been?

That’s not the right question, in my opinion. The right question is how can we get back to what we always were! How can we love as we were born to love — in, as, through Love?

If I have one hope for this time, it is that we will all remember that Love really is the Answer. And because Love IS the Answer, Love will supply the Answers.

Just like quitting smoking allows your lungs to heal, so, too, changing our habits will allow humanity and this planet to heal. And finally, I think, we’re ready.

So listen to my friend the tulip — and turn your face to the Sun of Love every day in gratitude. Look around at your fellow tulips and be grateful for their company. Reflect the joy your presence brings to other. And bloom where you’ve been planted — right here on this beautiful planet we all call home!

Today let’s listen to Love — and let Love give us the answers for a change.

Which is, of course, the topic of my #LoveViral To Do List today. You can listen here: #LoveViral To Do List 5

29.3.20

It seems like our world is rediscovering walking. For those of us who are daily walkers, it is wonderful to see others feeling the joy and hope that comes when we walk.

There are so many benefits to walking, but today I want to share one simple benefit because it’s what this year’s blog is all about: Presence.

With the world so filled with fear and uncertainty, practicing presence is more crucial than ever.

When we are present, we remember that right here, right now, we are okay. The sky is above us and the earth below. There are birds and squirrels and trees and water. Right here, right now, we are all here. Together.

Walking isn’t about getting someplace — even if you do have a destination. Because if you focus on the destination while you’re walking, you don’t enjoy the walking.

Walking is about putting one foot in front of the other. Over and over and over again.

Every so often when I’m going through my photos I find one like this.

The photo I thought I was going to post today was of beautiful pink flowers. But then I saw this one. The road with a little corner of my shoe — a photo I had no idea I’d taken — and I know it was needed to be shared.

We are so used to living future-based lives that none of us (some world-class meditators aside) are very good as being present. But for all our future thinking, we’ve all lived as if now is all there is. The now of immediate gratification. The now of my world not someone else’s. The now of this generation and not the next.

We have to untangle that mess! And the world is showing us the way.

Right now — RIGHT NOW — we need to learn to be present — be here now — AND we need to learn how that presence can help us become better stewards of the future.

Right now we are all learning that step by step is the only way to get through this time.

Step by grateful step.

Step by loving step.

Step by kind step.

Step by present step.

Step by step.

Step by step quiets fear — and when we quiet fear, everything begins to shift.

When we are present, we can hear the Voice of Love. When we are present, we care about one another and our world. When we are present, we become better caretakers of the future.

Walking is a great way to practice presence.

Sometimes when I walk, I use a mantra. Step by step, I invoke Love: This is the day that Love has made. Be glad. Give thanks. Rejoice.

Sometimes when I walk, I look deeply at every thing I see and I feel the Presence of Love.

Sometimes when I walk, I feel the breeze and hear the birds and I know that Love is all there is.

And when I feel distracted or disconnected or like I need to hurry home, I stop and reconnect with right where I am.

And then step by step, I step back into Presence.

So today, step by step, let’s keep learning to become more present now so we can be more loving to our future world.

PS As most of you know I’ve been posting little #LoveViral To Do List videos this week.

Today’s video is also another great way to practice presence. You can see it here: #LoveViral To Do List 4

Here are all of the #LoveViral To Do List videos: Love Viral To Do List Videos

And here are all of the original #LoveViral videos gathered in one place: #LoveViral Video Project

Let’s all #LoveViral!

28.3.20

One of the wonderful things about being a grounded nomad for a while is getting to learn more about right where I am. This week I learned all about violets.

On my walks I began to notice all these pretty little pansy-type flowers popping up in people’s lawns. How cute, I thought! I love the color purple. I love pansies. They look so sweet just sticking their heads up out of all that green. Then I began to notice them everywhere springing up in profusion in wild places — like in this photo. Big ones, little ones. Lots and lots of them.

Now, I’m a Westerner. I grew up in Southern California — and although I have lived in the Northeast and England and Europe and Texas, I have spent the majority of my adult life in the Mountain West. So there are certain flowers I have read about but never lived with. Violets being one of them.

Violets sounded to me like something from a Victorian novel. Delicate. Sweet. You know, shrinking violets.

These were small, but they seemed to be pretty pervasive. Were these violets?

Indeed they were and are. And they are pervasive. In fact, they are more than pervasive. Apparently they are invasive.

Or are they?

Turns out the internet is rife with passionate debate about the pros and cons of violetS. All written by gardeners.

Violets are wildflowers and they are far from shrinking. They grow and they grow in profusion.

Besides having such sweet flowers, these native North American wildflowers are a boon to wildlife. They are host species to many butterflies and both mourning doves and wild turkeys eat their seeds.

But to lawn owners, they are a menace. The sweet little spring flowers aren’t the issue. It’s that, once they take root, they really take root. They have long creeping rhizome roots that are extremely challenging to pull out.

Yesterday a friend sent me a video of Pope Francis blessing the world. I went online and read the translation of what he said. One thing struck me full force: He said we have all gone ahead “at breakneck speed”, ignoring the wars, injustice, and cries of the poor and our ailing planet. “We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.”

He said that we are being asked to choose right now. To choose what matters and what does not. To separate what is necessary from what is not.

Suddenly I saw a lesson in these little violets.

They are native wildflowers. They belong here. They help the native wildlife. And humans find them beautiful, too. Their cute little purple faces sure make me smile every time I see them. They’re like the Baby Groot version of pansies.

And yet they “ruin” our lawns. They are invading our front yards. . .

OR. . .have we perhaps invaded theirs?

The Pope is suggesting that this is the time we look at EVERYTHING we have taken for granted about how we live. How most of us ignore the dead animals that our cars kill, the species becoming extinct at a rate too massive to count, the children who are starving, the countries who are being decimated by war, and the fact that there is enough to feed and supply the world and yet the 26 richest people on earth in 2018 had the same net worth as the poorest half of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion people — and that eight percent of the world’s population controls 44.8 percent of the world’s wealth.

We, the lawn owners of the world, don’t want the wildflowers to ruin our self-created paradises. So we spray chemicals to keep our lawns green and then put up little signs so no one sues us if their dog dies from ingesting those chemicals. We drive at dusk and we worry about hitting a deer in case it incapacitates our vehicle or injures us. We expect two-day delivery and think we’re reducing our carbon footprints by carrying reusable bottles. We voraciously read the news about the economy or our favorite or least favorite politician, but we avoid any mention of genocide in a country we want to pretend doesn’t exist. And we ignore the statistics about child abuse and poverty and obesity and a startling rise in our reliance on anti-depressants, because, well, we want to keep our lives as artificial as our lawns.

It’s time for us ALL to take a good long hard look in the mirror. Because what we’re learning is that the violets aren’t going anywhere. They’re not the invasive species. We are. They are native to this planet and we’re the invaders.

This time is a time for us all to look at the “breakneck speed” at which we’ve been running roughshod over our planet trying to make it in our own image and likeness.

People keep wondering when we will get back to “normal”. I’ve come to feel that unless it’s a “new normal”. I’m not interested. We need to create a sustainable world. A world where what we do to help ourselves (put food on our tables and give meaning to our lives) also helps others to put food on their tables and give meaning to their lives. A world in which our actions do not harm other species or entire ecosystems.

We live on a globe. That is a circle. A circle is a circle. Everything connects. And yet we live our individual lives like straight lines. We live as though we’re driving test cars on a salt flat — going as fast as we can in a space devoid of anything but earth and sky. We live as though whatever we do can’t harm anything else.

It’s time for us to take stock of our own actions and recognize their consequences — but not by feeling hopeless or guilty or ashamed or even defiant.

This time is showing us that we can change when we have to. We can learn to sit still, to stop distracting ourselves. Our toys can get taken away and we can still remember how to play — with one another.

The only thing that most of us are allowed to do right now is to walk outside. And when we do, we are filled with gratitude for our beautiful planet. When we see others now, we smile at them. Four weeks ago, I was cut off three times in one day by drivers who were angry that I was driving too slowly. They veered into my lane, almost hitting me and others, to make their point. Now, wherever I go, it’s like a politeness contest. Cars stop for minutes signaling that I should go, while I am doing the same. We have this in us. We’ve just forgotten it.

To riff onJoni Mitchell: We paved paradise and then wondered why we were living in a parking lot.

Paradise is all around us. And finally we’re grateful. Now let’s act grateful. Let’s start loving our world whole!

Today I will look at every thing I see on this beautiful planet and everyone I wave at on my walks as an opportunity how to slow down and give back and love more. Will you join me?

27.3.20

My dog Allie hasn’t been very into walking lately. Sometimes I feel like I am literally dragging her behind me. She doesn’t seem to want to walk very far — and there are certain places she doesn’t want to go at all. I don’t know if it’s because she can feel energy we humans just ignore. Perhaps the world feels strange to her. Less noise. No people and other dogs she can meet and greet — which is her greatest joy! Whatever it is, our walks together have been challenging.

So I’ve had to mix things up. I wait til the evening for our longer stroll together and In the mornings, I just take her on a short spin around the block, Then I head out for a longer walk myself. This allows me to do something I really love. To get lost. To head out where there are no sidewalks, to walk fast and far.

Yesterday I ended up on the outskirts of town. I am in a place I do not know at all. I am getting a sense of who lives here and of the geography. But I learn more the more I walk.

We like to think of the world as quantifiable. This is the area where these kinds of people live — and they are like this.

When in fact, there are all kinds of people all kinds of places — and the only way we can know them is to know them. And to do that we have to get to know them.

Of course, right now, during social distancing, that’s not possible. Right now during social distancing, I am “getting to know” people through the messages on display in their front yards. Do they love to garden? Do they not see the bottles that have clearly been there since last summer? Do they have kids? Front yards tell us a lot about their people.

So yesterday, when I passed this bench way out on a country road where most of the neighbors where selling eggs or were fixing old trucks up on blocks in their front yards, I had to take this picture.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t quite parse the message.

Was it ironic? Was it just plain cute? Was it very well thought-out commentary on humanity vs the natural world? Or was it just yard sale finds that had found their way here?

And. . .would I get shot for trespassing to take a photo of Quan Yin with a meditating bunny?

Who knew?

And that is the message of today’s blog.

Who knows?

We don’t. But Love does.

Love always does.

I keep saying this — and I know it seems crazy to some people: Love knows. Love knows what? And what does it matter what Love knows?

I believe that when we stop listening to Love, we stop hearing the still small voice in our hearts that is always showing us the way. And pretty soon we have no idea where we are or how we have gotten there. And any of us who have ever read a fairy tale or seen a movie knows what happens then. The scary stuff happens then. When we haven’t been paying attention and we get lost, the scary stuff happens.

That’s what’s happening now. We’ve gotten so out of sync with Love that we have come to believe that we absolutely need things in two days that are flown in from all over the world. That having more stuff and going more places and distracting ourselves is what we’re here to do. That more and more matter no matter the cost to the planet is the whole point of everything.

It’s not.

We’re here to love.

Period. The end.

And when we do — we listen.

When we love, we listen.

When we listen, we love.

When I take my long walks where I let myself get lost, I am very well aware that I am a woman walking alone. So I am very vigilant. Not paranoid vigilant. But aware. I don’t listen to music or audiobooks. I pay attention to where I am. When I do, I hear things loud and clear like: Don’t go down that road. Turn around. Turn left here.

And I obey that voice.

But because I’m paying attention, I also see other things like the beauty of a dewdrop on a flower ten feet away, Quan Yin and a meditating bunny halfway down a driveway, someone sitting on a porch waving a friendly hello, a deer having its breakfast in the distance.

This is what living Love feels like. We hear what we need to hear and we experience everything through the eyes of Love.

As a world, we’ve fallen out of the practice of living Love. We’ve stopped listening to our hearts and have our heads tell us more and more and more and more is better.

And now, the world has hit the pause button for us. It is getting our attention.

Love is more or less pleading with us to make practicing Love be what we do from now on.

Are we listening?

What happens from here? We don’t know. But Love does. And if we listen, we will hear Love saying: Turn left. Don’t go down that road. Love more.

I will likely never know how Quan Yin got together with the meditating bunny, but I do know that I plan to spend every day listening to Love.

Today let’s get a little lost listening to Love and love as we are led!

26.3.20

Every day we hit bumps. We bump up against something that triggers us. We feel fear or doubt or anxiety. And that’s during “normal” times.

Right now I think much of the world is feeling like we’ve gone from what the pilots cheerfully call “some light chop” to full-on Bette Davis “Buckle your seat belts! We’re in for a bumpy night.”

In and of themselves, bumps aren’t a big deal. It’s what we do when we hit those bumps that is.

Right now, we’re learning a lot about our “bump behaviors”.

We can’t escape the bumpy parts as easily as we could just a few weeks ago when we could go out for a drink or that quart of ice cream or how for those unneeded shoes or go out to that movie we’d been longing to see.

Not only that, now that most of us are at home, we are all coming to realize that if we flail and wail over each bumps, the person who is going to be most miserable is us!

Yesterday when I saw this sign buried in a glow of forsythia, it made me smile.

I thought, What if every time I feel a bump, I were to grow a glow of beauty and blooms all around it?

Last week I posted seven short videos about what we can all do to invoke and invite the healing power of Love into the world by creating simple practices each of us can do every day.. (You can find all of them by clicking here: #LoveViral Videos)

So of course, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means for each of us to take #LoveViral. And one of the things it definitely means is to invite Love in when we hit those bumps.

A few weeks ago I was leading a tour in Louisiana. We had left ourselves two hours to drive out to these remote swamplands. But it took quite a bit longer than we anticipated. And the later it got, the faster I drove.

At one point, I saw a railroad crossing ahead of us. We had to drive up a slight hill, cross the tracks, and come down the other side. I was going fast. Not Starsky and Hutch Streets of San Francisco car flying through the air fast. But probably a bit faster than anyone should be crossing railroad tracks.

The two of us in the front seat had a slight jolt. But the two in the back seat went flying out of their seats. Both of them hit their heads on the ceiling of the car.

What happened next?

Well, fortunately for me, they are two of the most good-natured people I know — and we were all on a big adventure together. Which brought out all our good humor.

I felt terrible. And apologized profusely. But they started to laugh. And a head banging quickly turned into a funny story.

AND I slowed down to a slightly safer speed.

We finally made it to our destination with literally one second before they left without us.

I want to learn to take more bumps like they did. I want to learn to surround my bumps with blooms. I want to learn that the bumps don’t define us. I want to remember that the bumps are how we learn — to slow down, to laugh, to pray, to lean into Love, to apologize, to listen for what we need to learn or to shift.

To do this is a heart-centered practice. To do this is living Love.

So today, let’s all surround our bumps with blooms and laughter and learning and Love.

PS If you’re enjoying the #LoveViral videos, each week I’m doing a new series. This week is the #LoveViral To Do List Series. You can find the first one here: #LoveViral To Do List Day One

25.3.20

It’s been raining for two days.

It’s been grey ten of the fourteen days I’ve been here.

For a denizen of the Mountain West, this is all foreign territory. We’re used to blue skies 300 days a year. In New Mexico, most of us don’t own an umbrella and the raincoat never comes out of the closet. Our dogs don’t come home from walks soggy and filthy and smelling like wet dog and flecked with weird little black bugs.

But we also don’t have lush green grass and huge trees covered in spring blooms. We don’t have yards redolent with daffodils and tulips and hyacinths and camellias. Here my skin feels dewy and the birds sound like they are singing ecstatic operas.

Everything about being here feels like a metaphor for everything we are all learning.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. And yet it’s beautifully right.

Every bit of it. Even the bugs. The bugs are the only visitors I’ve had in weeks — and so I am learning to welcome them in Love.

When I go out on my daily walk — for which I am always massively grateful no matter the weather — I am in awe of the beauty all around me.

My neighborhood is a mix of sweet cottages, larger homes, public housing, and some very run down areas covered in trash. But no matter where I am, there are these trees covered in flowers. And after a rain, the flowers are covered in raindrops. And those raindrops seem to glisten in pure joy!

On walks like these, I find it impossible not to trust with every fiber of my being that underneath all this chaos and confusion there is a Bedrock of Love.

It’s easy to find the good when you’re looking at the world through Mother Nature’s eyes.

That’s why I walk: To listen to the real news — the news of beauty and hope and renewal and Love. To listen to what is the Ultimate Truth. And to keep learning to lean into Love.

I’m finding that my blogs and the little #LoveViral videos I’m sharing are starting to sync up.

Every day Nature teaches me what I need to learn — and I have the privilege and gift of sharing it with anyone else right now, because we’re all realizing we’re in this together.

This photo I took of this beautiful tulip flower captures the same message that I found in the David Whyte poem I read in today’s #LoveViral video: Love and Life and Truth form the “visible and the invisible working together in common cause.” (You can listen to today’s #LoveViral message here: #LoveViral Day Seven: Lean into Love)

Wherever each of us may find ourselves today — doing something or being somewhere that we did not expect — may we look at the world with new eyes and let the visible and the invisible show us the way to lean into Love, work together, show up in kindness and compassion — and invite Love in to heal our planet.

Today let us all focus on the beauty of living Love.

24.3.20

Yesterday was a VERY rainy morning. Allie looked at me like I was nuts when I asked her to go out to do her business. It took two very reluctant tiptoeing trips to get the job done.

So when I needed to stretch my legs and clear my head after working at the computer for six hours, I took advantage of a quick break in the weather to do a fast-paced walk through the neighborhood. Without Allie, who seemed happy to stay on the sofa.

It was quiet and I didn’t see a soul on such a cold grey day, until I got back to my cottage. Coming toward me was a very cute Boston Terrier.

I commented to its owners just how cute it was, and they replied, “Yes, she gets away with a lot because she’s so cute.”

That made me think of Allie, who is, in my humble opinion, as cute as it gets. So I looked up, and this is what I saw.

That little face waiting for me to come home. That little face wondering why I was talking to another dog and not her. That little face wondering why she wasn’t out on a walk with me.

Of course the old song sprang into my mind: How much is that doggie in the window?

Along with the obvious and only answer: Priceless.

And more so than ever!

What would I do without Allie right now? She is the only being I know here. She is the only being I talk to face to face. We share our meals together. We share our walks together. And we cuddle up at night.

To say I am grateful to Allie would be about a massive understatement.

Sometimes gratitude feels too small a word for how grateful my heart actually feels right now.

And yet, small or simple as the daily practice of gratitude may be, it will save our bacon over and over again.

And right now, we all need to engage the practice of gratitude as much as possible. Because to be grateful immediately shifts us out of fear or problem solving or anxiety into this: RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW EVERYTHING IS OKAY. AND I KNOW IT. ACKNOWLEDGE IT. AND AM GRATEFUL FOR IT.

So today I plan to love my little doggie in the window more than ever just to try to show her how grateful I am to her.

In fact, she inspired today’s #LoveViral message, which you can listen to here: #LOVEVIRAL DAY SIX: GIVE THANKS

Today, let’s all find a way to be grateful for one thing every hour. Let’s give thanks and keep giving thanks in Love!

23.3.20

Spring is coming in fits and spurts all over the world. The trees are blooming. Forsythia and daffodils are yellowing. And then there are the grey days, the snow days, the drab days. That’s all spring. . .

Yesterday I took a beautiful walk in a park. It was a cold morning, but the birds were out in full force. The trees were still bare, but the birds didn’t care. They know it’s spring, even if every day doesn’t feel or look like spring yet.

Robins are harbingers of spring — and that’s why I chose this picture for today. The background may be grey, but there is the robin, our harbinger of spring right there telling us that renewal is happening all around it.

It all feels like a metaphor. Our world has huge moments of hope and healing, following by fear and doubt and despair.

So, how we learn to stay focused on the positive when we are being so bombarded by the negative?

Many people I know are turning off the news. I’m one of them. I realized that I had started to believe that there was something I needed to know from the news. And yet, as the days have gone by, I’ve realized that most of the what the news told me felt alarmist and fearful and ramped up. And that if I spent the time I used to spend reading the headlines in prayer and positivity, in reaching out in Love and in listening with and to Love, my days and nights felt completely different.

I never spent much time on social media. But I’m part of a few Facebook groups and follow some Instagram feeds that are filled with messages of positivity and Love. I am hearing and seeing so much more Love online than ever before. And that’s so hopeful.

That’s why I’ve been sharing these little videos about heart-centered practices we can all do to take #LoveViral.

Today’s practice is about listening with Love. You can listen to it here: #LoveViral Day Five Video

Love heals when we invite it into every area of our lives. Love heals when we learn how to listen to its healing message. But to do this we have to practice listening with Love. This can seem hard sometimes. Hard is we're being bombarded by fear in the media. And hard when we fall into judgment or doubt or despair. That's why we have to practice listening with Love. It's an amazing practice -- and it's one of the ways we can all take #LoveViral.

I can do it when I’m listening to the birds or my friends or music or beautiful spiritual conversations. But then something happens and suddenly I’ve fallen off the Love Wagon and it’s been minutes or hours or half a day — and I realize I haven’t been listening with Love.

As we all are living quieter lives right now, let’s practice listening to Love. Listening as Love. Listening through Love. Listening with Love.

Let’s be more like this robin — who isn’t thrown by the weather or the state of the world. The robin is hearing the renewal of spring all around and is looking for its worms and making its nests for the next generation of robins.

Let’s hear more of the awakening of the world into Love and less of fear. Let’s all take Love viral.

Today let’s listen with Love — no matter what bombards us. And when we get distracted or dismayed, let’s trust that we will return gently to Love and listen with our whole hearts.

22.3.20

I saw this yesterday on my walk and it made me laugh. It also became my theme for the day.

Yesterday was so beautiful that I walked for eight miles. It has rained during the night and there was a cool breeze, blue skies, and puffy white clouds. It was a perfect day for walking.

I found myself thinking about the state of the world and how I’ve turned off the news. I figure that if there’s something truly urgent, someone will call and let me know.

And yet, when I saw this sign, it felt like an oxymoron. In fact, my mood felt like an oxymoron. How could I feel joy, feel like strutting, when the world is struggling so?

Yet everyone I met on the walk was also full of joy. It felt as though each and every one of us was so grateful to be out in the world on a gorgeous day.

All day long I struggled with what I was supposed to be feeling: Is it okay to feel joy?

Now I, of course, of all people, know that joy is not a frivolous optional superfluous emotions. Joy is an expression of Love, an invitation to connection with one another and our beautiful world. It is a conduit from our constricted fearful minds to our open healing hearts.

And yet, I kept struggling.

So last night I had a dream. I was in prison. I was locked in chains all day and night, except for twice a day when I was released to do some duty. I can’t remember what the duty was — except that it had to do with connecting with others — kids, I think. I told my jailors that it wasn’t good for me to be locked in chains. That my body hurt and not moving caused stress.

Finally, my care was given over to a variety of old friends — and they pleaded for my cause and I was unchained, although still in isolation except for my two hours of connection.

And then — because this can happen in dreams — I found myself getting take-out food someplace.

So I ate my meal and then suddenly I thought, “Oh my gosh! I have to get back to jail or they won’t let me be unchained any more.”

I had 20 minutes to get there before I would lose my privileges! So I began to run.

And as happens in dreams, I had to climb up ridiculous cliffs covered in weird toys. I had to swim across a manmade body of water to reach a restaurant, where they were playing violins. And then I had to run and swim some more through more and more crowded places.

The whole time I was panicked that someone would see me and realize that I was free and not back in jail.

And then the thought came: But if you’re free now, why are you going back to jain at all?

That’s when I woke up!

The solution to yesterday’s suddenly became perfectly clear. . .

This is how fear mesmerizes us. We believe that we need to keep taking in fear-based information so that we can stay informed. But all that information keeps us locked in fear and in fear-based behavior. Joy feels superfluous. Perhaps even disrespectful.

And yet joy unlocks Love. And Love is the cure. To live Love toward one another, toward our world, to realign our thinking and our actions and our beliefs with Love. To shift out of fear-based problem solving and look at the world wholly and only through the eyes of Love. This is how healing comes.

We may be locked down or sheltering in place or staying at home. But this does not mean that we should be cowering in fear. In fact, the more we shift from fear to Love, the more our lives and our world will reflect the healing power of Love.

I’ve heard people wonder when things will get back to normal. My hope is that they never go back to the old normal. That we all come to realize the ways in which our actions and thoughts and behaviors have gotten our world to where it is right now. And that we commit to creating a new Love-based normal for ourselves and our whole world. The more we free ourselves by living Love, I hope the less we will all want to go back to the jail of our compulsions and additions and distractions and diversions and pollutions and destructions.

We are all waking up — including our planet, which is so relieved to have a break from us bludgeoning it with our wants and needs. (Listen to today’s #LoveViral video here: #LoveViral Day Four.)

So when we strut, let’s strut together in joy for our lives, in gratitude for one another and for nature, and above all in LOVE!

Today let us refuse to be hoodwinked by fear. Instead let us choose to live Love and love our world whole!

#LoveViral

21.3.20

Reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s wonderful novel, A Signature of All Things, got me into mosses. But it wasn’t until I became a nomad that mosses became my friends.

Living in New Mexico for 25 years, I didn’t see all that many mosses (although the do exist in the high desert). But now that I live on the road, I hang out with mosses all the time.

Here’s what I’ve learned about mosses through our friendship:

Mosses lack the root structure characteristic of most plants. Like me, mosses are nomads who attach themselves to their environment as needed. I took this photo yesterday of a stair railing covered in moss in a state forest here in North Carolina. The railing was there. And now mosses are too. That’s how nomads live. I am here in North Carolina because all my speaking gigs got cancelled for the next two months and this is where I was when the world shut down. I’ve attached myself to North Carolina right now and it’s growing on me just as I’m growing on it.

That adaptability and attachment thing, however, can be have its up and downsides. It is believed that mosses triggered as Ice Age by attaching themselves to the earth’s bedrock, eventually causing the earth to suck up all the carbon dioxide and causing a major climate catastrophe. Sound familiar?

One of the things that being a nomad has forced me to come to terms with is my very large carbon footprint. I may not have a home, but I drive 22,000 miles a year — and fly just as many to those places I cannot drive. Lump me together with the rest of my human brothers and sisters, and we’re moss attaching ourselves to the bedrock of this planet. . .Right now, we humans are in the midst of a climate catastrophe of our own causing — and it’s time for all of us to take a good long hard look at our habits and make some changes.

Mosses get what they need for sustenance from the air — water and nutriments. But they also absorb the toxins in the air. That’s why they are a great barometer for what is going on in the world. So are we. We create the state of the world, but then we’re surprised when we manifest it in our bodies, our bank accounts, our lives. Like the mosses, what’s happening in us is a reflection of what’s happening in the world. And vice versa. We study mosses, but are we wiling to study ourselves as deeply?

Mosses can grow on anything, just as we humans can live anywhere. Except that to live some of the places we live, we have to create systems that allow us to live without boiling over in the summer or freezing in the winter. Yet we do this without checking the effects those systems have on our environments. We think moss is pretty in a forest. Not so much on a piece of furniture. But it’s all the same to moss. Just as the earth is all the same to us.

But here’s the thing about moss. Moss doesn’t destroy or disintegrate that to which it attaches. In fact, it nourishes it. Moss is symbiotic — which is why gardeners sometimes attach moss to another suffering plant. We humans, not so much. Perhaps it’s time to learn something from our friends, the mosses. Who have given of themselves when needed to everything around them. Including us. We have used mosses for heating and building and bandaging wounds and diapers.

Mosses were the first plant on earth. They are still here and flourishing despite what we have done to the planet.

And we humans. . .?

Living on the road, stopping long enough in different ecosystems to learn a little about them, I have found myself called to become more of a steward for our planet than I ever have been. The funny thing is that I have thought of myself as an activist — for animals and Nature. But to be real, a lot of that has been in my mind. How much has my daily life reflected my core beliefs? How much have I been living Love?

In Gilbert’s book, A Signature of All Things, a character shares this: “The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"-namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love.”

Mosses have become my friend because I get to have conversations with them about everything I need to learn. These conversations are much sweeter than most human conversations. I never find myself triggered or on the defensive, even though they are usually right and I am usually behaving less well than I could.

My moss friends gently remind me that I am ordering something I don’t really need and asking for it to arrive faster than it really needs to get there. They reflect back to me how often I am worried about whether there will be enough. They tell me: I am consuming far more than I produce. And they certainly have taught me that my relationship with the planet is far from symbiotic. In fact, I do all the taking and give nothing back but some gratitude.

When I walk in a forest among the mosses, as I did yesterday, their lushness feels glorious and hopeful and alive! Whether I am in a winter forest of mostly browns or a spring forest of vibrant greens, nothing is so alive as moss!! One of the most unforgettable experiences of my life took place on a tiny little island in Alaska. So small it had no mammals, it was covered in moss. Walking on moss felt like I had been transplanted to Fairyland. As I literally bounced across the softest substance on earth, I breathed in an air so pure and sweet that it felt as though my whole being was permeated with joy and hope and life!

In Gilbert’s novel, a character writes: “The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions — electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us… When we cease all argument and debate — both internal and external — our true questions can be heard and answered…That is the gathering of magic.”

I felt that gathering of magic on that Alaskan fairy island.

And I am feeling it now.

The world is quieter. Yesterday, as I walked through the forest I burst into tears because I could feel the trees and the moss and the rivers talking and breathing and loving us all. They are not judging us for what we have done to them. They are just doing what they’ve always done. Breathing so we can live.

Right now is a time for all all to feel this whole sphere of air that surrounds us. To feel the universal sympathy of Nature that holds and loves us. Right now it is time for us to learn to cease all argument and debate — both internal and external — so that our true questions can be heard and answered. This is the Gathering of Magic that our planet needs right now.

I am learning this from my friends, the mosses. They want me to share their message of Love with you.

And no. I haven’t gone mad by myself in this small North Carolina town where I know no one. I really do hear the trees and birds and mosses speaking. And so can you. If you can invite this time of global quiet into your heart to hear what it has to say. It’s time for us all to listen to the wisdom of the mosses and rivers, the trees and birds, the bears and fish, and follow it.

They will teach us how to love the world whole. We just have to learn to listen.

Today I will see the signature of all things and listen for the answers to all our questions in gratitude, hope, and healing.

20.3.20

To be real, sharing photos of being more present in Love by seeing more deeply feels a little less urgent than it did at the beginning of the month given everything going on in the world!

Almost everyone in the world has seen their routines and daily lives upended.

Here’s my short story:

I am in a small town where I know no one. I am fortunate to have found a safe sweet place to stay for which I am extremely grateful.

I may be here a month. I may be here two months. I don’t know.

So I am social distancing in a place where I literally am socially distant from every single person I know for an open-ended period of time.

I go out for one or two long long walks every day with my beloved canine companion Allie.

And on my walks, I go see all my new friends: The trees, the flowers, the birds, the squirrels, the clouds — and a few lovely strangers I smile and wave at on these walks.

So the reason that sharing a practice of seeing more deeply idea of being more present to Love is less urgent is because I don’t need much urging to practice this. This practice has become essential to my life. I NEED to go out and see Love as spring begins to bring renewal all around me.

But because I am so isolated, because all of my planned book events and appearances for the next two months have been postponed or cancelled, I have wanted to reach out to folks during this time to share the message of hope and healing and Love and connection — of Living Love — that I had hoped to be sharing in person.

In particular, I’ve wanted to share a Call To Action that is at the heart of my heart-centered practice of Living Love.

The Call To Action is this: LOVE HEALS! And Love is what the world absolutely needs now. So together, let’s take Love Viral!

That’s why I’ve been making a new series of short videos that I’m calling #LoveViral about the healing power of Love and posting them on YouTube and on IGTV.

You can also find them on Instagram and Facebook.

So please check them out and share them with anyone who might need them.

Here is a link you can share with anyone who needs it: bit.ly/loveviral

I will update with a new video each day.

More than ever, each of us need to find new ways to choose Love not fear. It’s imperative for everyone! Love heals and it WILL heal our world. . .as long as we all do our part and LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Today let us all take #LoveViral.

19.3.20 The First Day of Spring

Yesterday felt like a very challenging day for lots of people. And as I prayed my way through what seemed like an onslaught of fear, my day ended on such a high as I experienced some amazing spiritual connection that made me feel, once again, what an incredible opportunity for healing this is for us all — if we can keep leaning into and living Love.

So this morning I — on the first day of spring — I decided to bump up the colors on this photo and to share this poem — one of my favorites by William Stafford — with you.

It’s a profound poem that gives us a path for connecting through this day of awakening. May we all keep one another awake and live Love together!

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

TODAY LET THE SIGNALS WE GIVE TO ONE ANOTHER BE ALL LOVE.

18.3.20

Every time we’d drive across railroad tracks and see this sign, my dad would ask me the same question: Railroad Crossing: Watch out for the cars. Can you spell that without any r’s?

As a little girl, I would look carefully at the words and try to figure it out. Over and over again, I would puzzle out the letters and know for sure that the answer was no. Absolutely not. There was no way I could spell that without any r’s.

Then one day, I got it!

Oh how I remember my dad’s joy when he saw the penny drop!!

Of course I could spell that without any r’s!!

After that, whenever we drove across railroad tracks, we’d recite the riddle together and laugh at our little joke.

I thought of this yesterday (as I do every time I cross railroad tracks) when I saw this sign on my morning walk.

And of course, it made me think of my dad. But it also made me think of what’s going on in the world.

In the news, we are hearing so much that is terrifying in the way of global statistics and numbers and symptoms and studies and restrictions. It’s hard not to feel scared when you’re hearing only scary things.

And yet, at the same time, we human beings are showing up to one another in extraordinary ways. In much more kindness and love and joy than ever, as we realize that we are all in this as one big human family.

In the news, we hear death counts and disease numbers and all the rules and regulations ratcheting up even as the global economy seems to be plummeting down. But how often to we remember to look for stories about recovery and healing, about communities coming together, or about the hopeful progress being made?

When we are scared, we look to the news for information, thinking it will make us feel better. But mostly it makes us feel freaked out.

We look and look and look, but we can’t for the life of us see how we could possibly be justified in finding joy and goodness and hope and healing. In even feeling we should want to look for the good.

That’s the precisely the mesmerism that prevents us from healing.

I’m not suggesting anyone bury their head in the sand, or go out to a bar with 500 of their best friends and drink themselves silly. We must all express prudence, discretion, respect, obedience. We must all learn to listen to our own inner discernment and wisdom and guidance. Something which, frankly, most of have neglected in favor of doing and buying and getting.

The more we learn to listen to our hearts, the less fearful we will be. AND living like this will have a profoundly holistic effect not just on this time but on our future as a people and a planet.

You see, what I’m suggesting is that we stop looking at “railroad crossing” and start looking at “that”.

Just as there are no r’s in that, there is no Love in fear.

It is NOT crazy to start looking for Love instead of living in fear.

It is NOT irresponsible to keep finding joy and hope.

It is NOT wrong to want to see all the good emerging from this time.

And if you think that isn’t going to help anyone who is suffering physically or mentally or economically, then you’re wrong!

There is actually nothing more important that we can do than to shift our state of mind from fear to Love.

This is NOT pink paint pie in the sky unicorn talk. Love heals. Love will always heal. Fear does not.

Scientific studies have shown that intense feelings of love are as effective at pain relief as the most powerful painkillers.

Happy people heal faster. There is proven link between positive thinking and the immune response proven in countless scientific studies.

Feeling joy also is the most effective antidote to stress and anxiety — and it is proven that stress is a bigger killer than most diseases.

Conversely, more and more scientific studies are connecting fear with the manifestation in our lives of exactly what we are afraid of. . .

Railroad Crossing. Watch Out for the Cars: Will we keep looking for the fear in everything we read and see? OR: Can we look a this time as an opportunity to re-connect with one another, with our communities, with our families and friends, with our planet, with the birds singing int he trees, with the clouds in the sky in Love, joy, hope, and healing?

Yes. I believe not only that we can, but that we must. Because this is where hope and healing begin.

Just as we can all spell that without any r’s, we can all choose Love and keep choosing Love and keep living Love and we open our hearts to the joy and hope that can and will change our lives and world for the better.

Today let us all choose Love not fear as we remember that this is the only way for us all to heal our world!

17.3.20

I’m obsessed with ombre. (According to Wikipedia, ombre (literally "shaded" in French) is the blending of one color hue to another, usually moving tints and shades from light to dark. ) So when I saw this beautiful ombre camellia flower yesterday, I had to share it. In fact, it prompted a really fun idea for something that could bring people together during this time of social distancing — a photographic scavenger hunt that I shared on a wonderful walking group page that I’m part of. . .(If you love to walk and want to check it out, click EverWalk Nation.)

This seemed to bring others joy, because everyone started sharing their own flower photos. That made my heart sing. Because it seems like all of us are remembering the little things that bring joy. And I know from my daily practice how profoundly healing joy can be.

Then, last night I read a wonderful essay about someone who heard something that sounded maybe even crazier than my directive to change my life by starting and sharing this daily practice of joy. A friend said to this woman, “Don’t be concerned about anything — wonderful things are taking place.” At the time she was struggling with an incurable disease that was steadily getting worse, a business that had failed, and a son in a dangerous war zone halfway around the world. But she couldn’t get this thought out of her mind. She thought: “How can I rejoice and say that wonderful things are taking place?” And suddenly she felt and heard in her deepest being that Good and Love are all there really is — and they are always expressing themselves. And that is why wonderful things are always taking place. So to focus on those things was to align herself with the Reality of Love and Good and Life.

Since nothing else had worked, she decided why not — and instead of being afraid of what seemed to be happening in her body and her business and her family, she turned all of her energy and thoughts to rejoicing because wonderful things were taking place.

Nothing else had worked. But this did. Within a remarkably short period of time her whole life turned around. Her illness ended, her business began to flourish and her son was removed from danger. Overjoyed and awed, she shared this idea with others who were willing to shift their thinking — and their lives, too, turned around too! In extraordinary ways.

When there seems to be no hope for a human answer, this is when we sometimes are willing to risk something seemingly crazy — like rejoicing int he Allness of Love or Life or Truth or Joy or God (or whatever words any of us have for whatever is larger than this human morass we seem to be floundering in). Believing and leaning into something bigger than wars or diseases or social distancing. To stop focusing on fixing our problems and instead live Love, rejoice in Good, and be grateful for Life right here right now. It’s a game changer.

That’s why I wrote my book Living Love. Living Love instead of feeding my fear changed everything for me. But it’s a daily practice. Fear is a motherf$^*@er. It is a shapeshifter. And it will do everything and anything to get our attention and drag us down. But every spiritual teacher tells us that living Love through heart-centered practices such as gratitude or joy or service instead of feeding fear is the answer:

“When you are grateful, you are not fearful.” - Broher Steindl-Rast

“The path of joy is connection and the path of sorrow is separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Find a place inside where there’s joy — and joy will burn out the pain.” - Joseph Campbell

This sweet ombre camellia brought me so much joy that I had to share it. Sharing joy brought others joy. Joy reminded people that, despite everything we’re hearing in the news, wonderful things are happening. People are singing to one another in empty streets or teaching yoga from rooftops. People are finding ways to help by making donations to giving people jobs or just reaching out and sending love.

Wonderful things are happening everywhere. We really can rejoice in that. And I firmly believe that the more we rejoice in Love and the less power we give to fear — this will shift our world in profoundly healing ways that none of us may even be able to imagine.

From darkness to light like ombre, let us rejoice together.

Today let us all find and be grateful for and share all the ways we have to rejoice!

16.3.20

Yesterday I walked almost 10 miles. As our world seemingly grinds to a halt, walking felt like the most healing thing I could do.

I walked through nature, through empty business districts, through nice and then not-so-nice neighborhoods, through parks, alongside streams, and in areas that felt run down and neglected. The whole walk felt like a metaphor for the world. A mixed bag of confusion and hope.

I saw a kingfisher on a telephone wire. I talked with a yoga teacher and her Blue Tick Hound named Zorro. I saw families out running and biking together. I saw nature preserves with informational signage. I saw nature preserves falling down behind Do Not Enter signs.

I walked through it all.

Just as we are all walking through this all. . . the parts that scare us, the parts that dismay us, the parts that confuse us, the parts that give us hope, the parts that make our hearts sing.

As I walked alongside a tumbled-down wooden pathway through some wetlands, I saw this tiny red budded leaves starting to emerge. I snapped this photo that seemed to capture it all. The once-flourishing boardwalk with neglected signage behind me, the beginnings of green grass, and the emergence of spring. And when I saw the photo later, I realized that it all came together to create something visually beautiful. All together — the rickety human remnants not only did not detract from Nature’s beauty, in fact they made that beauty seem to sing even more.

I see this photo as a tiny metaphor for our world. Over the next months, our whole world is going to see very clearly what no longer works. Old ideas. Crumbling institutions. False promises. Misconceptions of what we are all here to be, to do, to contribute. Without the distractions and entertainments that we thought we needed to make our lives feel whole, who will be become? We are all about to find out.

I have always felt that my way of being of service was this way — reaching out through the written and spoken word accompanied by visuals to inspire and bring hope. But yesterday I found myself wanting to do more, and so I am looking for ways to volunteer to be of service. This is a change for me — and it makes me see just how comfortable I’ve become in thinking my way is the right way for me. Now I see it’s just the comfortable way. And in times of discomfort, often our old comforts no longer comfort us. So we get to find new ways to move through the world to help and heal and love the world whole.

And that’s what I saw in this photo. That this is our world — the old and the new co-existing in ways that we all get to learn to navigate now. Do we navigate from a place of fear or from a place of Love? Do we help one another or just help ourselves? Suddenly the future of our planet doesn’t seem so abstract any more. And how we answer those questions means A LOT. For right now, and for forever.

I, for one, am going to dedicate myself to understanding beyond words what it means to answer with, as, through, for, in Love.

Today I look for every opportunity to respond to our world in Love. This is living Love.

May we all live Love.

15.3.20

Obviously I didn’t take these photos. My mom did. But I am sharing them today because I needed to be reminded of all the ways that both of my parents taught me how to see.

Right now, aside from the fear that so many people are feeling, we are also struggling with how to deal with these big changes in our lives. Including a huge reduction in what we all do every day as diversion and entertainment.

These may seem like minor concerns — given the much larger health and economic issues at hand. But I don’t think most of us realize how much we rely on daily diversions to assuage our anxieties about the state of the world. So when our fears are up and our toys have been taken away, we have to find new ways to center and find calm and peace and joy and hope.

That’s when I am most grateful for the gifts my parents gave me. They used to send me down to the beach alone for hours and told me to find ways to amuse myself. They would tell me to go to a hotel dining room with a newspaper to have breakfast alone. They would remand me to my room to read for a few hours. And as I got older, they would encourage me to explore whatever city we were in my myself.

And even when we were together, they did not pull out board games. Rather we simply stopped right where we were — wherever that was — and found beauty and things to discover.

These are photos of my dad and me on a beach looking for rocks. To this day, my brother and I both still LOVE looking at rocks.

But it wasn’t the rocks for me, as much as it was the joy in seeing something beautiful that I might otherwise have missed if I had not looked more deeply.

Right now, those lessons my parents taught me about finding joy in simply seeing the world around me are saving my bacon, as I find myself stopped in a place where I know no one for an indefinite stretch of time.

Yesterday morning I came out of my little cottage and saw two robins jumping and playing in the grass. Above them a cardinal sat on a branch and tweeted at them. And nearby a squirrel sat up on its haunches and watched the show. Honestly, it was better than anything I’d seen on Netflix for quite a while.

I took a seven-mile walk in the morning on a nature trail and another two-mile stroll in the evening. Along with birds and squirrels, I enjoyed the flowering trees, the forsythia, the daffodils — who knew there were so many varieties of daffodils? Those walks were the highlights of my day and gave me hope and brought me joy.

Among the many things I hope that we will learn from this extraordinary moment is how to appreciate, be grateful for, and care for the beauty all around us — which is accessible to us. In a city, in the country, on the road, we are surrounded by life in all its myriad forms there to be appreciated for what it is. And my hope is that we may all realize how much we take for granted and find more Love in our hearts and become better stewards for our planets, better neighbors in our communities, and better citizens of the world.

Today I will look at every rock, every sidewalk, every blade of grass with gratitude and stewardship for its survival.

15.3.20

My walks have always been a highlight of my day, but right now — grounded unexpectedly in a strange place in a strange world that is also grinding to a slow strange halt — my walks have become even more vital. Yesterday I saw every flowering tree like a child on Christmas. Blooming gifts of joy and hope and renewal in a world reeling in fear.

I have said it over and over again over the years — but it is even truer now. Every single day we can choose fear or Love.

Now, more than ever, we must all choose Love. Love is what eviscerates fear. Truly. Even when we are quaking in our boots, when we turn wholeheartedly in humility and hope to Love, Love is a light in the darkness.

I took this photo yesterday, but it wasn’t until I looked at it later that I saw the clock on the courthouse in the background. What a metaphor!

In the foreground is nature — a tree just starting to flower into spring with bright pink blooms just beginning to open. Spring is true. Spring is real. The first day of spring is just a few days away.

And in the background is a clock on a courthouse — a marker of time on a building that has held the fates of countless individuals and organizations and communities.

When we are afraid, as the world is now, we look to time for relief. How much longer do we have to endure this? When will this end?

When we are afraid, we look to institutions to make things better by giving us answers and reassuring messages and solutions. By providing us with what we need.

But as we witness those institutions floundering for answers themselves, as we witness the daily life of the world change minute by minute, all around us here in the Northern Hemisphere, the birds are still singing, the trees are still leafing, the flowers are blooming, the squirrels are chattering.

We humans have done everything we can possibly do to alter Nature — and make no mistake, we have altered the habitats of species around the world to the point of extinction — but still the birds sing and the trees leaf and the flowers bloom and the squirrels chatter.

Their resilience in the face of all that humans have done is a lesson to us all. Nature reminds us of what the Buddha taught: “Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”

Today we can choose to find beauty and celebrate joy and connect in human-kindness and love in adversity. And when we do, we are living Love. We are inviting Love in to do what Love does — remove our fears. And when we do that, it is not a selfish act. Each one of us who chooses Love during these challenging times contributes to a new kind of global conversation. Fear paralyzes and isolates and kills. Love connects and inspires and heals. It’s that simple.

We need a Love-based Science. A Love-inspired politics. Love-guided information. And it is up to each of us to lean into Love, listen to Love — and let Love not fear speak through us.

These are actually powerfully hopeful times. We have a chance to look at our world and make different choices. Love-based choices. Choices that can change our world for the better.

Let’s show up to this new conversation as a flowering tree instead of a clock. Let’s show up to this new conversation in the spirit of hope and healing and humility and humanitarianism. Let’s all re-learn how to live Love — and let’s live it.

Today let Nature remind us that re-new-al is happening all around us.

14.3.20

Given all that is going on in the world, I am taking a quick break from my photo practice to share something from my upcoming book — Living Love: 12 Heart-Centered Practices to Transform Your Life.

As someone who has been a nomad for four years now, I've had to learn how to embrace the unknown. I've had no other choice. In fact, I'm writing this post from a small town where I know no one and where I find myself because the whole world’s plans for the next six weeks have been changing on a minute-by-minute basis. So I’ve had to stop and stay put — and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to find a place that feels safe, has access to nature, and from which I can do my remote work with my clients.

More than ever right now, I am so grateful for all the ways travel and my daily spiritual practice have taught me not to fear what I don't know, but rather to invite it to teach me what I do need to know. And that, inevitably, is releasing fear and letting Love take the wheel.

Right now our whole world is facing our fear of the unknown -- a fear which, by the way, psychologists refer to as "The One Fear to Rule Them All". It’s called this because every fear, ultimately, is a fear of the unknown. We may call it fear of crowds, or fear of disease, or fear of death, or fear of public speaking. But really it is fear of what we don’t know about what may happen.

So I created a practice in which I have come to invoke my “I don’t know” every single day. And it’s changed my life!

In fact, I even give a talk about three unexpected words that can transform your life. And what are those three words? I. Don’t. Know.

You see, I've come to understand is the beauty of this spiritual paradox:

What we don't know usually scares us. But it is also what we don't know that will set us free.

That's not some pink-paint, pie-in-the-sky truism. The unknown is terrifying the world. But the yet to be known is also what's going to heal the world.

Both. And.

Facing the fear of the unknown means that we have to be willing to choose Love even when fear is shaking us around like a rag doll in the mouth of a tiger.

Think about this: Every single world-changing discovery or invention or journey came from not being afraid of an "I don't know." A new culture, a new continent, a new cure, a new idea, a new creation. It all came from a human I don't know.

This next period of time will be a life journey that has the potential to radically shift our world. But how? For the better? I believe it can. Because the more we can learn to release our fears of what we don't know and instead ask Love to teach us what we need to know from a humble and willing place of knowing that we do not know -- the more we will each show up in kindness and hope and compassion and collaboration and connection. And that is what our world needs now . . . and always.

The most important thing any of us can do right now is to help one another through these challenging times like pilgrims help one another on any spiritual journey.

Step by step, we must remember that, however scary things may seem, we walk with Love together into the seemingly unknown — always remembering:

What we don’t know usually scares us.

What we don’t know ultimately sets us free.

Today I will remember this and share it in hope and healing with everyone I meet.

AND TO GET THAT STARTED:

If you would like to receive a video about this Living Love Practice of invoking your “I don’t know” (since my book comes out a month from today and is not yet available), read how below:

Over the next week, I will be creating a video about this timely teaching. And I will send it for free tor anyone who pre-orders my book.

Right now, through the end of the month, you can get 20% off of my book along with a free guided visualization by clicking DOVER LIVING LOVE OFFER.

All you need to do is email a screenshot of your pre-order with a request for the video teaching. By the end of next week, I will send the video download link to your email.

Email the above to info@victoriaprice.com and get your free video next week! And in the meantime, keep breathing and leaning into LOVE!

12.3.20

Yesterday I drove through the beautiful Cherokee National Forest alongside a stunning river filled with rapids. (It turned out to be the river where the whitewater rafting competition for the 1996 Olympics had been held.)

I had chosen to take a back road because I needed an infusion of nature. Nature is one of my go-to daily practices of joy — and I needed some joy. I realized that I needed to actively counter all of the fear and bad news with some heavy duty heart-centered practice.

I had to invoke Love big time! And that’s what joy does for me. It shifts me out of fear and back into my heart and into Love.

As I was driving along, I noticed a series of small waterfalls on the left and sign that read: Goforth Creek! I had already passed it, but I turned around on the empty stretch of road and went back. Everything about it was calling to me — from the beauty of the moving water to the name of the creek.

I got out of the car and clambered up the rocks to shoot some photos and also some videos. I wanted to send one to my friend Daniela, because we always send one another videos of moving water. As I stood there on a huge boulder in the middle of all the moving water, all of the world’s troubles seemed unreal. And not in a denial kind of way. But rather in an acknowledgement that there is something much bigger than all the problems of our human making.

That Something is why I go into Nature. And yesterday I needed that Something to remind me that the focus of my spiritual work right now isn’t praying to solve a problem, but praying to realign with the larger truth that holds our world together in Love.

I renewed my vow to myself to practice joy not as a self-centered pursuit, but as a grateful and conscious and hopeful and healing practice of recognizing that there is beauty and grace and kindness and healing and connection and joy all around us — even in the most fearful of times.

After about ten beautiful minutes surrounded by the feel and sound and movement of water and trees and air and rocks, I felt a deep sense of peace.

So I went down to the car. Where I saw my dog Allie just staring at me with a WTF? look in her eyes.

Allie LOVES rocks. She loves to jump and climb all over rocks. She always has. The WTF? was — You went up on all those rocks and didn’t take me?

No, I hadn’t. Because I wanted to take photos and videos and not worry about her. But now I felt just plain selfish.

So I grabbed and Allie and we clambered back out on the rocks together. Well, I clambered and she sprang from rock to rock.

She was so purely happy. So full of joy. She was not overwhelmed with fear at the state of the world. And neither were the trees or the boulders or the sky. Neither was the water. This place was a temple to joy.

So then I did something I never do: I took off Allie’s collar and leash and harness — and I took this photo. Of Allie — in joy — in nature.

As a reminder to me that to truly find joy and peace and hope and healing, we must commit ourselves to unselfish connection with one another and our planet. And to seing one another in Love, as Love, through Love, with Love.

A bit later in the day, I received this in an email from Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield addressing the world issues. He began with this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh:

When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive.

And then Kornfield wrote:

The need for the dharma is stronger than ever. We can choose to live in our fears, confusion, and worries, or to stay in the essence of our practice, center ourselves, and be the ones on this beautiful boat of the earth that demonstrate patience, compassion, mindfulness, and mutual care.

If you want to live a life of balance, try this: Turn off the news for a while, meditate, turn on Mozart, walk through the forest or the mountains and begin to make yourself a zone of peace. Let go of the latest story. Listen more deeply. When we react to insecurity with fear we worsen the problem—we create a frightened society. Instead we can use courage and compassion to respond calmly with a fearless heart.

I was so grateful to read this affirmation of what I had just experienced. As well as for the ways that nature and my dog Allie had remind me to choose calm and remain centered as I go forth in my daily heart practice of fearless joy and love and hope and healing on this beautiful boat which we are all on together.

Today may we all continue to let go of each latest story and go forth leaning into Love as we share this boat of life.

11.3.20

There’s something about seeing the first spring flowers that brings so much hope and joy. Yesterday I saw my first iris — covered with raindrops. It was just what I needed to see! I needed a moment of pure beauty on a day filled with dark rain clouds and the fear of the news cycle.

I had stopped for a walk in Laurel, Mississippi. I had driven past Laurel on the highway once before. I remembered it because the exit was Leontyne Price Boulevard. At the time I thought to myself: Imagine coming from this small town in Mississippi and becoming one of the great opera divas of the world!

My dad was a huge opera fan — and one of his most memorable experiences was being invited by Leontyne Price herself (whom he had run into in an Italian restaurant and called him Cousin) to listen to her record in the opera house! He never ever forgot hearing her sing in person while sitting in an empty opera house. He called it one of the most incredible experiences of his life — in a life full of incredible experiences! She was a larger-than-life diva with a larger-than-life voice. And simply because they shared a last name and were both famous, she invited him to hear her sing! What a gift!

So I decided to see more of Laurel. I ended up in a beautiful neighborhood of large beautiful houses surrounded by spring gardens.

As I walked, I imagined what it must have been like growing up African-American in the South during the Depression — and the huge divide that must have existed between this neighborhood and the black neighborhoods. But Leontyne Price had ended up working for a family in this neighborhood — a family from New York who became her benefactors and helped support her musical education at Julliard. Ms. Price had probably walked through this neighborhood as a teenager and imagined her future life.

But could she ever have envisioned becoming someone whose voice would be lauded and heard by millions all over the world? How could a young African-American girl during the Depression and World War II imagine getting to live the life for which she had been created?

It was hearing another African-American woman named Mahalia Jackson sing that allowed Leontyne Price to believe it was possible. The same Mahalia Jackson who would later sing two hymns before Rev. Martin Luther King Jr gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington DC.

Leontyne Price had a dream — and her dream became a reality in part because there was a white family that saw past color and believed in her and her talent.

Would Leontyne Price have been heard by the world if Alexander Chisholm and his family had not become her benefactors? We’ll never know. But the point is that they did.

Yet that doesn’t make them the heroes of Leontyne Price’s story.

It makes Love the hero of her story.

She was born to parents who had dreamed of having a child for so long that, when they did, they provided her with every opportunity — including music lessons when the recognized her gift. Her parents saw Leontyne through the eyes of Love.

Leontyne Price said of her mother: “Momma was home. She was the most totally human, human being that I have ever known, and so very beautiful. Within our home, she was an abundance of love, discipline, fun, affection, strength, tenderness, encouragement, understanding, inspiration, support.”

She went to work in for a family where the children and the parents saw her gifts and encouraged her to use them. A family that did not come from the South — and so perhaps were not as inculcated in the ways of racism.

Ms. Price would later say: “The way I was taught, being black was a plus, always. Being a human being, being in America, and being black, all three were the greatest things that could happen to you. The combination was unbeatable.”

Racism is a story of fear. To see past fear, we have to use the eyes of Love. But to see with the eyes of Love, we must have been seen ourselves through those same eyes.

Leontyne Price has lived this way. She said: “If you are going to think black, think positive about it. Don't think down on it, or think it is something in your way. And this way, when you really do want to stretch out and express how beautiful black is, everybody will hear you.”

We all have this capacity to see through the eyes of Love, but how often we forget and slip back into fear.

Every day the news is filled with fear. Fear makes us forget that the answer is always Love.

Does that seem pie in the sky when right now the answer seems to be science and hand sanitizer and the policies of the CDC?

Well, it sure must have seemed pie in the sky to a little black girl with a big voice growing up in Laurel, Mississippi, to think of becoming an opera singer in the face of systemic separate but equal racism in the Deep South.

But Leontyne Price never let racism stop her — and racism was a far bigger and more fatal and longer lasting epidemic than any virus. It still is.

Whatever any of us believe about the power of prayer, the power of Love to cast out fear, the importance of science and common sense, I don’t think any of us can deny that solutions to the world’s most egregious problems are only possible when we shift of out fear and lean on Love.

Even problems like viruses.

When Florence Nightingale and her team of nurses recognized that more soldiers were dying from unsanitary conditions than from their war wounds, she took on the male medical establishment at a time when women did not have a voice. To do that, she had to recognize on thing: “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” She reduced the death count by two thirds.

Jonas Salk, perhaps the most famous virologist of the twentieth century (whom my father also talked about being blown away at meeting) said of his work to develop a vaccine for polio: “I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.” (Nightmares = fear. Dreams = Love.)

And as Princess Diana said of another virus that caused both immense fear and judgment: “HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug -- Heaven knows they need it.”

The bottom line is that — no matter what the virus ramping up our fear and fear-based behaviors (be it HIV or racism or Coronavirus) — the first and last line of defense is always Love.

When we are filled with fear, this may seem impossible or even crazy.

But nothing — not one thing — has ever changed for the better without Love.

So today, instead of feeding the fear, trying leaning into Love and see where that takes you.

Don’t we all want a world where science and politics and education and human interaction are rooted and grounded in Love? I know I do.

That white iris was the first one in bloom.

In a world amped up in fear, those of us who choose Love and live Love and lean on Love may feel a bit like that white iris — all alone in a see of wintery fear. But we have to trust in Love just like we trust in the coming of spring. Love will bloom — and Love will guide the world in our healing.

Fear won’t. That’s the bottom line. Fear just begets more fear.

That’s what I learned yesterday as I walked through Leontyne Price’s hometown of Laurel.

I remembered that we have to keep choosing Love no matter what.

Today — no matter the fears with which I am bombarded — I will be that white iris and bloom in Love.

10.3.20

You can tell the history of a house in the Garden District of New Orleans by its fence. How long is is? Is it cast iron or wrought iron? Is it simple or ornate? All of these questions can lead you into story after story that eventually unfurls the entire history of an era.

Will they be able to say that about us in the future? Do we pay this kind of attention to detail? Do we create places of such architectural beauty where our gardens are as important as our buildings?

I love the Garden District of New Orleans. And I have had the great good fortune to walk almost every inch of it — all of it a visual and aromatic treat!

I think of my mother every time I walk through the Garden District. We never came here together, but I always imagine what I could have learned from her here — about architectural detail and styles about the types of flowers and trees. This neighborhood would absolutely have been my mother’s cup of tea!

It’s a gift to be able to walk with those who are no longer with us and still feel their presence. Yesterday would have been my sister-in-law’s birthday. I walked with her here yesterday too. A lover of beauty, I took in everything beautiful I saw and shared it with her.

I imagine that that everyone who walks through beautiful places walks with those they love in their hearts and minds. Beauty evokes memories — and we love to share what we love to see or smell or touch or feel with those we love, whether they are still present or not.

That is another of the gifts of beauty: It returns us to our hearts, where we find those we love waiting to be with us.

This photo captures not only a place but a feeling. A feeling of Love shared in love.

Today I will remember that the Love I feel was learned from those who loved me. And I will carry them with me in my heart.

9.3.20

With so much conversation about misinformation circulating these days, I chose this photograph to inspire today’s blog.

I saw this statue of the Virgin Mary at the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans. For those of you who don’t know anything about voodoo — except all the misconceptions that are out there — you might wonder what a Virgin Mary is doing with so many offerings in front of a folk depiction of two African people playing instruments. Until this trip to New Orleans, I wouldn’t have known either.

Turns out, voodoo isn’t a scary cult with dolls and pins aimed at exacting revenge or causing violence — as it is so often depicted. Voodoo is a religion — an amalgamation of African, Native American and Catholic traditions. As many West African traditions call forth the ancestors for protection and veneration, so, too, Voodoo has deep ancestral ties. However in Voodoo, those ancestors don’t necessarily need to be blood relations. They can also be heroes such as Martin Luther King or Gandhi or New Orleans Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. In other words, this relationship is all about living forward a legacy of Love.

New Orleans’ beloved heroine Marie Laveau, was a Voodoo priestess as well as devout Catholic. Because Voodoo is a tolerant, non-judgmental tradition, Laveau saw no conflict between the two. In fact, living in a city ravaged by epidemics and in a century during which life was often short and hard — and particularly so for non-whites — Laveau (who was of African-American, white and Native American ancestry) promoted anything that brought comfort, joy and healing. She became renowned for many things — including seemingly miraculous healings, serving as a go-between in communities that did not always communicate, commanding the respect of the white, black and Creole communities, her beauty and seemingly eternal youth, her clever use of her social connections, as well as her gifts as a hairdresser.

And so in New Orleans — a city of mixed ethnicities and nationalities and classes — tied together by geography and a common history of tolerance and hardship — Laveau’s ability to connect the African goddesses with the Virgin Mary didn’t result in Black Madonnas (as in many other places around the world), but in the Virgin Mary assuming her place in the Voodoo pantheon of worship.

But around the world incorporating the Virgin Mary could also also be “beard” — a way for non-Christian slaves being forced to adopt a religion not their own (and that used its religious beliefs to condone slavery!) to worship whom and what they were asked in ways that felt true to their own deep beliefs.

The Virgin Mary — female and not male, a mother, known to be a source of miraculous healings — resonated much more deeply with people enslaved or limited by the patriarchy. And so the Virgin Mary could become a “permissible” stand in for the some of matriarchal goddesses of West Africa.

The bottom line is that we are all looking for SomeThing or SomeOne to bring us comfort and healing in a world fraught with fear. And so for me, to see these connections made in a way that debunked all the stories of scary Voodoo was profoundly healing right now.

There is so much rhetoric and misinformation and fear being stirred up right now. It is hard to tell what is prudence and discernment and what is anxiety and alarmism. It is also incredibly challenging to remember that in a world in which capitalism is clashing with coronavirus, in which science and politics and the media dominate our daily lives, that we all have access to deep-seated spiritual foundations that can keep us rooted and grounded in Love.

While religions and beliefs may morph and change over time, the underpinning of all religious traditions is Love. The hope for Love, the desire for Love, the need for Love, the exchange of Love, the gift of Love, the belief in Love. This is what I learned from Marie Laveau and from this altar — to remember that however we may appear to be different from one another — underneath, all we all want, is to love and to be loved.

So let’s find a way.

Today let us all face fear with the courage of Love.

8.3.20

Yesterday we went into a gallery here in New Orleans that had been beckoning to us all for a few days — but had been closed each time we walked by.

The window was hung with floating and crumpled pages of books and the entire interior was filled with books dangling from the ceiling. What we discovered when we went in was an amazing artist named Chris Roberts-Antieau, whose work resonated with us all. (Funnily enough, she has galleries in Santa Fe and New Orleans, but I had to come to New Orleans to find her.)

To be honest, I have low expectations of galleries in touristy places, so it took me a moment to remember to look deeply.

This was the piece that made me see. Really see. See with Love. And so fall in love.

It is called The Anatomy of Bluebird — and it is made with fabric, applique and embroidery. Birds always open my heart — and this piece made my heart sing. Once my heart was opened, I was blown away by so many of her pieces. As we left, each of us played the game I always played with my parents as a little girl: Which piece of art would you like to take home and live with every day? Honestly, it was a tough call. I could find joy and hope and love and laughter in so many of her pieces. As could we all.

Walking around hearing what each person in my group loved, made me see each piece with new eyes. And we all found so much joy in sharing art. A joy that has blessed my life since childhood — and which I love sharing with others on this trips around the world.

But ultimately, it is not Chris’ artwork that made me decide to make her the subject of my blog today. It is her artist statement, which she has written out blown up onto a huge piece of poster board toward the front of the gallery. What she wrote is what I believe so deeply — and since I couldn’t have said it any better, I want to share it with you. If you want to see it as she wrote it in her beautiful and joy-filled printing, please click HERE.

And when you’re done reading Chris Roberts-Antieau’s words, I hope you’ll continue more deeply into the rest of her website and see her artwork. She is amazing, and I trust you will find as much joy there as we did.

This is what Chris wrote — and since this blog is all about joy and this month’s practice is seeing through the eyes of Love, I can’t think of better words to share than these. I, for one, plan to take them to heart. I hope you will, too.

Artist Statement of Chris Roberts-Antineau

If there is one thing I could hope to say to all of you, it is to NEVER give up on your dream. I was a C and D student in school. I had to repeat the 9th grade. I was not recommended for college (I didn’t go). And I never went to art school. Basically, I never learned what NOT to do (for this I am grateful - eternally.) I just had a voice inside that I listened to. I really trusted that voice. I still do. Please learn to listen to yours. I guarantee it will take you where you need to go. Don’t be afraid!! (Fear is bad!)

My work is about JOY. It is about the mysterious origin of joy, and the wonder of childhood. (I try to hang on to that wonder with every OUNCE of my being!!) My art is really a by-product of my life, and what I believe about being ALIVE. I seem to be cursed with a constant vision of the “Big PICTURE” part of life, which constantly brings forth the same TRUTHS — that we are all blessed with the ability to recognize and CREATE joy, and that life is about that creation.

7.3.20

The United States is and has always a country that is always seeking the next new great thing. . .new territory, new work forces (from slavery to indentured servitude to tenant farming to immigration), new technology, new innovation, new talent, new stars. . .to fuel our seeming insatiable hunger for that latest shiny bright penny that tantalizes us.

For almost the last hundred years, that is what has turned us from a nation of makers and growers into a nation of consumers. What we are discovering is that this model is not sustainable.

Sustainability is a fashionable word these days, but this is how the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development defines it: Sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In other words, is what we are doing now allowing us to meet the world’s current needs without compromising the future of the world and its inhabitants? We can all answer that question with a resounding NO!

About six years ago, when my publisher wanted to release the 50th anniversary of my parents’ iconic 1965 cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes, I decided to take a little road trip around the US to visit the restaurants in that book. Over 90% of those restaurants in the United States no longer exist. Whereas over 90% of those restaurants in Europe do exist. The contrast was stark and telling: In the United States, we do not value tradition.

Last night I organized a dinner to celebrate that cookbook at one of the remaining restaurants — Antoine’s in New Orleans. Our meal took place in the 1840 Room, surrounded by photos of the family that has continuously owned Antoine’s since it was founded in 1840. The food we ate was all on the menu that my parents included in the cookbook — and has been on the menu for over 100 years. And our waiter, Charles Carter, proudly shared the history of this iconic dining establishment — as well as his own history. He is a third-generation waiter, following in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather. He hopes that his son will also follow in his footsteps.

In our country, that kind of tradition seems strange. Almost counter to the do-your-own-thing spirit of independence on which our country is founded. But last night, as Charles took solicitous care of us, showed us the signed copy of the cookbook my parents gave to Antoine’s, brought us a Baked Alaska with the restaurant name of the front and the cookbook’s name of the back and knew exactly where to take us to have our pictures taken where my dad once stood — we all LOVED that tradition.

In fact, it’s what people love about coming to New Orleans. The tradition. Yesterday we learned that the French Quarter architecture would not even exist were it not for one woman in the 1930s who tirelessly fought to save it from demolition at the hands of real estate developers. She found allies in all of the artists and authors and iconoclasts who had come to New Orleans to live in a city filled with creativity and its own unique expression of Southern hospitality.

When I was younger, I didn’t get that passion for “the old ways” that my mom and dad loved, which drew them to ancient cultures and old art and antique furnishings. I loved the new. I wanted the next and the newest. But now I get it. Now, as I share this photo of Charles Carter, proudly holding a famous Antoine’s Baked Alaska underneath a photo of one of the famous family members who made Antoine what it is — I see that the only legacy that will ever last is the Legacy of Love.

It’s what I learned from my parents, and it’s what I learn when I lead this trips to historic places, and it’s what I learn every single day. For all the seemingly insatiable hunger for the next new thing, there is really only one thing that any of us want — Love. We want to feel it and express it now. And we want to leave it behind.

I’m good at certain kinds of loving and terrible at others. But this month’s heart-centered practice of presence — seeing through the eyes of Love— is helping me stop beating up on myself and realize that loving is as simple as choosing. Charles Carter told us that he was the only one of his brothers that chose to follow in the family tradition. And if the huge smile on his face and his immense joy in his work is any indication — he is living forward a long legacy of Love.

We can choose how we experience our lives. We can choose Love. That’s what I saw last night at Antoine’s — and I am more grateful than I can say for the reminder!

Today I choose to consciously keep creating a living legacy of Love!

6.3.20

This photo was taken in the Achafalaya Basin — the largest wetlands area in the United States. Large as it may be, it is a tiny fraction of what it once was.

Although this photo looks like a photo of a meadow with some trees, in fact it was taken from a boat floating 14 feet above the ground. The ground has been flooded since September, when the rains came months earlier than usual.

The pretty green stuff that makes this picture look so springlike is actually an incredibly destructive and invasive species that is taking over the bayou ecosystem.

And the beautiful trees are actually second growth bald cypress after the original bald cypress were virtually eradicated in the 1800s.

Even the beautiful sunny day wasn’t. It was actually unseasonably cold and cloudy — and this was the one moment that the sun peaked through.

So. .. as you can see, this pretty picture of a pretty forest is actually a disheartening story of the ecological history of the United States.

And yet I have chosen this photo to represent seeing through the eyes of Love.

That’s because our tour was conducted by the Achafalaya Basinkeepers, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the consequences of our commercial, industrial, and environmental choices not only on this gorgeous wetland but on the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. They have taken on the enormous task of trying to save this vital and important ecosystem before it’s too late.

Our captain LOVES this place. His knowledge and passion and advocacy and care for this beautiful environment was so moving. Instead of being depressed by the state of the world, he provided a beautiful example of what one person can do — and how he has raised his family to care for their environment as well.

As he showed us cypress trees that have been struck by lightning and fused together to survive, to become homes for lizards and birds and snakes, as he described all of the ways animals and fish and birds have had to adapt and re-adapt to the ways we humans and the climate change we have created have radically altered their environments, all I could hear was how much he loves this beautiful basin.

He knew every tree, every nook and cranny, every species, every season. This, I thought, is what it looks like too see through the eyes of Love — and to commit your life to loving someplace whole.

For all of us who sometimes feel hopeless about the state of the world and wonder what we can do to help, this is a model: Love something or someplace enough that you will do whatever it takes to make sure it continues to be loved instead of destroyed.

This is what the Basinkeepers do. (Their website is gorgeous and informative — so you can read more about their work HERE.)

This is what we can all do. . . Love and commit and commit and love. Until we come to understand that Love is commitment and commitment is Love.

Today I see through the committed eyes of Love — letting myself be guided by the Love that always heals.

5.3.20

New Orleans is a city full of fraught history. A port town on the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the might Mississippi River, it is a place where cultures, ethnicities, nationalities, classes, religions and more have all clashed. And its architecture and even its gardens are a direct reflection of its past.

On my last trip to New Orleans, I noticed this statue of the Virgin Mary. Yesterday I learned its history — and some of the people (Anne Rice and Nicolas Cage) who have owned this house and garden where Our Mother of Perpetual Help resides.

But that’s not why I took this picture. I took this picture to share with a number of dear friends with whom I have been talking about the Divine Mother. I took this picture because I recently re-watched The Song of Bernadette (It happened to be on TV and I started watching because of my dad and ended up watching because of the story.) I took this picture because I have been noticing how many people have statues to the Virgin Mary in their yards and in their businesses. And all of that has got me thinking about devotion.

According to the dictionary, devotion means love, loyalty or enthusiasm for a person or a cause. It also means religious worship or observance.

I grew up in a house with many different kinds of statues — many of which had religious or devotional significance when they were made. A statue of the Virgin Mary sat near a statue carved in West Africa and used in ceremonies and dances. Growing up I thought of those statues as art. It wasn’t until I took a class in African art that I began thinking about why some of these pieces had been created and what they had meant to the people and cultures that created them.

In other words, I grew up looking at statues like this out of context. And in some way, that way of seeing has stuck with me.

So it was the Our Mother of Perpetual Help above this statue that stirred me. It was the thought that all of us, deep down, know that we want and need perpetual help from Something or Someone greater than us. And that was why I took this photo. Taking this photo prompted me to read all about the history of a famous icon and to learn that there are specific prayers that people pray to Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

And so, in this month’s practice of seeing Love as a way of being more present in my life and in the world, taking this photo made me think about how people pray, what people want when we pray, and why some cultures and people and religions look to statues and icons like this to ground them in their prayers.

In reading the prayer to Our Mother of Perpetual Help, I was struck by some words in particular — a number of which are repeated: powerful, protection, consolation, sweetness, confidence, soul, sacred., lovely. And i was struck by the fact that all those words are about Love. Love that is powerful and protects. That consoles and brings us confidence. that is sweet and lovely. And that fills our soul.

It made me realize, once again, that however different we may all believe we are from one another, we all still want and need the same thing: Love.

I’m enjoying this new practice of presence. It is taking me places I would not have imagined — just as it is taking me exactly where I knew I would go. Back to Love.

Today I will remember that we are all devoted (whether we always remember it or not) to the same thing: Love.

4.3.20

Yesterday Allie and I stopped to stretch our legs in rural Louisiana. Although only early March, it was already hot and muggy as the sun tried to come through a thick layer of clouds. The trees were bare and the grass was just starting to green.

A few miles off the highway, we found a National Park site where a former plantation had once been. In this Creole country, slaves had once lived and worked and farmed cotton.

We walked up to the old blacksmith shop and then around one of the main houses to the former slave cabins. The heavy heat, the bleak flat landscape, the nearby river eroding into the only road, the isolation — it was a place that you felt more than saw.

What you felt was the desire to escape and the utter futility of trying.

As I stood looking down the rows of two-room slave cabins that had once held two family groups each, I had the same experience I had visiting the living quarters in former Nazi concentration camps of Germany. I felt that seeing this was a duty. To understand the dark moments of our human history forces us never to forget what we do not want to recreate.

And yet, as I stood there looking down row after row of shaded front porches that had held generations of families, I also understood that these shelters had been people’s homes — sometimes for whole lives. These were the places these slave families had had to find a way to share and experience Love in a world which mostly did not view them with anything resembling love.

So I stood there and tried to feel the births and deaths, the small celebrations, the caring for one another that might have happened in those cabins. I stood there and tried to imagine the ways that cramped rudimentary cruel slave quarters might have been turned into “homes”. I tried to remember that even in the most horrible circumstances, we all still hope to connect with one another in Love.

I stood there and did what I promised myself I would do this month. I tried to see Love.

And suddenly I heard the sounds of children playing and women singing. I smelled the food being made and felt the care being shared. In that bleak and empty landscape, I felt the tendrils of joy that inevitably shoot up through all human hearts just as green shoots will come up through even the most parched earth with a little water.

I had to feel that. I had to honor the lives that had been lived there against their will by looking for the Love.

I had to see Love . . . or I would not be seeing at all.

As I drove away back into the slew of fear and bad news bombarding our world, I carried the whole feeling with me. I could not erase the feeling of bleakness and isolation and horror, but neither could I unhear the songs of hope and the sounds of children playing, the smell of small meals shared and the dreams — futile or not — of a better life.

On this unplanned detour I found it harder to see Love than I had hoped — and yet I also found it impossible not to see Love. Because that is how we are made, and who we are made to be. We are here to love and be loved — no matter how bleak things may seem.

I felt that yesterday, and it gave me hope.

Because in that once thriving plantation, which serves as a reminder of a dark period in our human history, Love also lived. Just as it was ultimately the Power of Love that finally ended slavery. And so it must be Love that we all invite into our hearts to continue to unwind the snarls of slavery that still exist — though less visibly. Because only Love can set our world free.

Today I see Love where it seemed Loved could not exist — to remind me that where life is, Love is. Always.

3.2.20

Yesterday I kept looking backwards. At the snow-covered mountains that faded from view behind me. At the sunset in my rearview mirror. What that told me is that I have loved where I’ve been. Despite being so busy that I rarely looked up from my computer, I felt cradled by the mountains that I love and by the big skies of the Mountain West.

As the sun set behind me last night and I drove deeper into the darkness, my heart welled with gratitude for a place I used to call home.

The West has always been where I’m from and where my heart feels most centered.

This photo captures the Light of that Love.

Today, as I drive forward into a new landscape, I carry the Light and Love of Home with me. Home is in my heart.

2.3.20

The wedding I officiated on Saturday had been scheduled for July. When life intervened and it was moved up five months, there was a lot to do! So I did what I like to do — I jumped in and started doing. As did lots of other people. We all came together and made this wedding happen!

In addition to co-creating a ceremony with the couple, I also volunteered to be in charge of the music and the flowers. Why? Because music and flowers are two of my love languages. . .

When I went to Trader Joe’s to buy all the flowers, people stopped me in the aisles to talk. Everyone asked me why I was buying so many flowers, or they commented on my choices or the colors. I had so many fun and sweet conversations just because I was walking around with loads of flowers. Which showed me that flowers are pretty much everyone’s love language.

I LOVE flower arranging. I have always loved it. . .and stepping away from all of my computer work and creating flower arrangements for a few hours this weekend was just SO MUCH FUN!

I made all different kinds of arrangements, but this is the one I placed right next to the altar that I also made. . .filled with candles and other symbols.

I just loved the sweetness of the cream-colored roses tinged with pale pink and the pink hypericum buds.

Hypericum is another name for St John’s Wort. People into herbal remedies know St John’s Wort is commonly used for "the blues" or depression and symptoms that sometimes go along with mood such as nervousness, tiredness, poor appetite, and trouble sleeping. There is some strong scientific evidence that it is effective for mild to moderate depression.

None of the St John’s Wort at this wedding was ingested — but I can vouch for the fact that this bouquet and all the flowers . . .along with joy-filled music, loving friends, two people who have spent their whole lives working on themselves and their relationships to get to their wedding day . . . definitely did go a long way alleviate all of the nervousness, anxiety and depression we’d all been feeling about the world.

For one day, all we all felt was Love and joy.

That’s why I took the picture of this bouquet. I created it to emanate Love and when I see it, I feel Love.

Today this bouquet is my reminder that Love will always lift us up!

1.3.20

My word for 2020 is presence. My intention for this year is to be more present. So each month I am focusing on one heart-centered practice that helps me practice presence.

This month — March — my practice is seeing.

More specifically, my practice is to stop each day to take at least one photograph of something I want to see more deeply.

Toward the end of last month I realized that I hadn’t taken any photos in a few months. It was no coincidence that I have also been working non-stop in a way that feels more like my old workaholic self. Since photography has always been an essential part of my daily practice of joy, it’s time to rekindle it.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to take pictures. I took this picture of my parents sitting across the table from them at breakfast on one of our trips.

My mom was the photographer in our family — capturing every last detail of our lives on film. My dad earned his living in front of a camera.

My mom loathed having her picture taken. My dad’s smile lit up every snapshot.

From childhood on, I’ve always had a camera. I loved taking pictures in which I tried to capture on “film” what I felt when I saw something.

This picture captures how I saw my parents: My mother anxious over something. My father filled with joy.

But this pictures also captures how they saw the world: My mother worried about what the world might think of her. My father eager to see what the next adventure held.

But is that the simple truth of who they were? Of course not.

My mother was also deeply spiritual, an iconoclast and innovator. A stylish, funny, thoughtful, smart, curious and adventurous woman decades ahead of her time. And my dad could be fearful, worried, maudlin, and almost pathologically conflict-avoidant.

This photograph has become a kind of touchstone in my life. It reminds me that how we are seeing the world at any given moment is a direct reflection of how the world sees us. And that what we want to see is usually exactly what we see.

Worry begets worry. Joy begets joy. So which one would re rather experience?

That’s why, this month I am going to use the heart-centered practice of seeing to see what I want to see more of. And that is Love.

I want to see more Love. And so Love is what I am going to look for and capture on film and share here.

Because it is up to each of us to create the experience of our lives that we wish to have. And I’m pretty sure all of us would like to feel more Love and less fear right now.

To do that, we have to choose to see Love, even when we are being inundated with fear.

And we have to choose to live Love, even when we are being encouraged to run away and hide in terror.

To live Love, we have to choose Love. That’s why this month, I am going to choose to see Love and share it with you each day.

Today I choose to see the Love in this photo I took fifty years ago. I choose to see the Love in my father’s eyes. The Love they kept alive from the day they met to the day they died (even through difficulty and divorce.) I choose to see the Love they had for me, for the world, and for life in general. I choose to see that Love begot love. And I was created and held in Love from Day One — even when I doubted that. Today I choose to see my parents in, as, through, with the eyes of Love.

29.2.20

Today happens once every 4 years.

And for the couple I am marrying this afternoon (as in I am the wedding officiant), it happens once in their lives.

I almost didn’t graduate from seminary and get ordained because I had such a mental block about marriage. But once I started officiating weddings, I so got it!

A wedding day is a Day of Love.

Today, Leap Day, this couple will be taking a huge leap of faith.

I want to learn from them, because right now we all need to take some big-ass leaps of faith.

So I picked this photo because it doesn’t depict an anxious leap or even a courageous leap. It depicts the leap as dance — the leap of joy — a leap of ecstasy. A leap of expectation of good.

Today — as we pause from the routine of the normal annual cycle . . . and on my last day of a month about writing about the practice of pausing — I pause to learn from Love. I pause to know that a leap of faith can be the most beautiful hopeful joy-filled leap of Love there is.

Don’t we all need to remember that right now?

INTENTION: Today let’s all leap — and trust that we will always be caught up in the Arms of Love.

28.2.20

I was up in the middle of the night, and when I finally fell back asleep in the wee hours of the morning, I dreamt that I lost my dog Allie. I didn’t notice it at first.

In fact, I had gone through a whole day or two without noticing that she wasn’t with me. Since she and I are joined at the hip, I was freaked out not just because I couldn’t find her, but also because I hadn’t noticed she wasn’t there.

I could barely breathe as I tried to retrace my steps and figure out where we had separated.

While Allie was lost, someone gave me two more dogs. A golden-colored puppy that looked just like Allie and a Dalmatian. The handed them to me, said we know you’ll want these now that Allie is gone, and then left.

Suddenly I was in even more of a panic. I live on the road, I thought. I can’t have three dogs. And all I want is Allie. And then I had another panic. Wait! Where’s MY Dalmatian? Where’s Jack? Have I lost him, too?

Then I got a call that a vet had Allie. So I rushed over with my two new dogs and picked her up. I put her in the car with the Dalmatian and the other puppy. The puppy tried to bite her, but the Dalmatian was calm. And Allie seemed calm too, but I felt that she was so upset with me. You left me to fend for myself, and I come back to find two new dogs?

Now that I had Allie I felt better. But I still needed to find my Dalmatian Jack — though some little voice was trying to tell me that he wasn’t alive any more. (In real life, my beloved Dalmatian Jack passed in the fall of 2016.)

Then, suddenly, I was in a huge house that wasn’t a house but a college campus with lots of shops and people and bathrooms filled with dogs and homeless people. Except that it was also my childhood home. And a couple came in that used to live there. I haven’t seen them in years, but it was the husband’s birthday yesterday (in real life). And I didn’t know what to say to them because I hadn’t seen them in so long and I instead of greeting them with joy and love, all I could think about was whether Jack was dead or alive. But I felt it was unfair to ask them that since they had come to see me.

Then I woke up — and I didn’t know where I was or which dogs were mine. The two on my bed? (Allie and my best friend’s dog.) Or just one of them?

My heart was beating out of my chest as I struggled to make sense of it all.

Until I remembered that right before I fell back asleep I had thought of the topic for this blog: When all the bad news becomes too overwhelming, when life becomes too stressful, hit pause. Just pause and re-center. Pause and pray. Pause for Love. Just pause.

But in my dream, I couldn’t pause. I just kept doing and going and solving. That’s how I lost Allie and how I was trying to find her. By running around like a chicken with my hair cut off.

And then I remembered that while I was up in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, I wonder if I will regret having spent two months working like a madwoman with no respite. Will I feel like I was even present in this place? Or could I have been anywhere locked in a white room in front of a screen just working?

My dream was my answer.

I have been so buried in work that I have lost track of everything but work. To the point that life seems like it is all and only about work. I enjoy my work, but work is not all there is. . .

Time for that pause button.

So I’m going to stop typing this and spend five minutes with my sweet Allie before I get up and go to work. And while I’m working, I’m going to pause and get quiet and re-center. And when the news gets too overwhelming and fearful, I’m going to pause and pray. And when I feel like I am lost, I am going to pause until I remember that we are all found in Love.

I am going to be grateful for all my work — but I am not going to get lost in it. I am going to lose myself only in Love.

INTENTION: Today I pause the doing, and remember to lean into Love.

27.2.20

Yesterday someone shared a powerful story about prayer with me just when I needed it most.

She said that she rarely ever shares this story, but that she felt safe enough to share it — and that this felt like the right time.

It sure was!

Buoyed by her powerful experience, my own much-needed prayers yesterday evening felt confident and hopeful and true. Not to mention effective.

I think a lot of us are praying more these days — given the fears being ratcheted up all around us. But most of us don’t talk about it.

But I’ve always and deeply believed in the power of prayer. Just as I’ve always and deeply believed that prayer is unique to each of us.

Whether we are religious, spiritual, both, spiritual but not religious, agnostic, atheist, confused or even angry, we can all pray.

That’s why this poem by Mary Oliver has meant so much to so many people.

And so today I’m sharing it with any of you who either need to read it again, or perhaps have never read it before.

PRAYING (Mary Oliver)

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

INTENTION: Today I will keep remembering to pause to pray.

26. 2. 2020

This quote by Guillermo del Toro is the invocation at the start of my new book, Living Love: 12 Heart-Centered Practices to Transform Your Life.

I chose it because del Toro captures the most fundamental truth of human existence!

For years I’ve said to anyone who would listen: Every choice in our lives comes down to fear or Love. I say it in every talk I give. I write it in one form or another in every blog. And still, apparently, I need to learn it.

Yesterday I said it to a client who is in a creative industry that should be filled with such joy. And the way he described how people feel working in this industry — joyless, mercenary, overworked — broke my heart. It was so clear to me: This industry, which should radiate love, is filled with fear. And I am so excited for him, because I truly feel that he can reinvigorate not only his own experience but that of others with Love and joy.

And then I walked out of my meeting with him and spent the rest of the day watching fear take the reins. I witnessed it all. I felt my chest tighten. I reacted to things that did not call for a reaction. I didn’t eat well. I ran around with my hair on fire. And I got more and more and more stressed.

Everything in life comes down to choosing between fear and Love. Except this didn’t feel like a choice.

A ha!

That was the clue.

We choose between fear and Love. I firmly believe this. Except that when fear is running the show, it doesn’t feel like a choice. And as Al Gore said, this makes us flail between denial and despair without ever pausing in the middle to do something.

That something we all need to do is to choose Love. And then to keep choosing Love. And to choose Love over and over again!

So how do we break the mesmerism? Yesterday I found a clue.

An important meeting location got changed at the last second and we were forced to meet in a coffee shop. Every table was full, there were no outlets and my computer was almost out of juice. I hadn’t eaten a thing. I was so noticeably off my game that the person with whom I was meeting kindly asked me what was up. I explained — but in a very frantic and rather ashamed way. And then we kept working.

We were sitting at a tiny table under a VERY large speaker. My nerves were jangling and I was trying so hard to re-center and choose Love, when suddenly I realized that the music coming from these very larger speakers was loud headbanger heavy metal and that this had been playing non-stop for an hour.

I looked up at the speaker and said in a loud voice to the music gods, “What the actual FUCK?”

And then I turned to my colleague and said, “What’s with the music here? I’m already feeling anxious and this isn’t helping.”

A little smile spread across his face, and he said, “I think they play it so that people don’t say here all day and work.”

And suddenly the absurdity of it all just came flooding through. His wry grin and the head-banging music, my lack of food, and my hair on fire began to seem hilarious. And I started to laugh and he started to laugh — and we laughed out loud together for over a minute.

It. Was. Awesome.

We paused to laugh. . .and after that, everything got better and better and better.

Because in that moment, in that laughter, in that absurdity I chose Love. That laughter was Love breaking the mesmerism of fear.

Choosing Love is not a Hallmark card. Choosing Love is deciding that fear — no matter how loud, scary or real it may seem — does NOT get to run the show. Choosing Love is remembering that only Love is real. And when we do this, it’s like pulling a paper bag off our heads and realizing that it never was night.

So today — another day with way way way too much on my plate — I will remember to pause and keep choosing Love. Probably imperfectly. Perhaps erratically. But with humor and consciousness. I will keep choosing Love.

Because, as Guillermo del Toro and the rest of us know deep in our hearts: Love IS the only Answer.

INTENTION: No matter what. Today I pause and choose Love. And keep choosing Love.

25.2.20

Peonies and lilacs are my favorite flowers. But frankly, I love all flowers and photograph them obsessively.

When I was a teenager, I told my mom that I wanted to make enough money to have fresh flowers in my house all the time. Now that I don’t have a house to put fresh flowers in, I find that I I have fresh flowers wherever I go. Because I walk!!

That miraculous discovery is the essence of today’s blog. When we give up what we think we need, we usually find that we already have it. In droves!!

From time to time when I’m on a flower photography jag, a friend will ask me: What’s with all the flower pictures?

That’s when I trot out my favorite quote by Iris Murdoch: “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

I think about this whenever I see flowers. Why aren’t we all just jumping for joy all the time at the beauty of the world, instead of doing our level best to try to destroy it?

But that’s not today’s flower lesson. Today’s flower lesson is all about ego.

One of my teenage heroes was President Harry S. Truman. He was from Missouri, like my dad. I am pre-disposed to like people from Missouri.

Truman was a humble, plain-spoken man thrown into the middle of the world stage after the a huge and horrible war and trying to walk in the shoes of one of the most beloved presidents ever.

Harry S. Truman said this: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

I have spent a lot of time over the past decade on ego elimination. The less ego we feed, the more True Self we experience. It’s glorious and hopeful.

But to be real, ego elimination is kind of like my effort to reduce single-use plastics in my life. I do really really well and suddenly I realize that, although I don’t buy water bottles any more, every other damn thing comes wrapped in plastic. My spinach, the fennel from Trader Joes, my shampoo bottles. Oy! And so I have to dial the effort up a notch — and start looking for things that have no packaging. . .

That’s what the ego’s like.

You think, I am humble. I am doing this to serve others. I want to give back not be applauded. And then someone says or does something that triggers our little wounded selves, and suddenly all you can hear or think or believe or want is ME ME ME ME ME.

The best thing I have learned from being a designer was the freedom that comes from not being ego-invested in the outcome. Because I never wanted to be a designer (my mother was a designer and I never wanted to be like her!), I didn’t have that burning urge to “Be A DESIGNER”. That was such a gift. It allowed me to show up to be there for my clients, to be a good boss, to be a grateful collaborator and co-worker. I always knew what I did not know and that kept me humble.

But the ego is a tricksy rabbit — and in my current work doing holistic branding and design, it has found a way to slip in under the guise of control and creativity, in expertise and knowing what’s best! HAH!

The ego wants me to believe that it is needed . It wants to take credit for all it knows and for all its years of hard work. And so every single day I have to stand porter at the door of my thought and kindly escort ego out of the foyer of my mind before it takes up residency in the penthouse.

That’s when I think of flowers. Peony and rose bushes aren’t shouting their own praises as we walk by. Imagine if they were. . .

Hey hey —- look over here! My flowers are pink and flouncy and they smell great. I had to work really hard for this, so check me out. The soil here is crap and it was a rough winter. But I’ve worked hard and look what I’ve grown for you.

No no. Come over here. Peonies. Meh! They grow for what, a month? And all those petals. Stick with me. I’m a rose bush. And talk about smelling good! Nothing beats a rose for aroma. And I’ll bloom for you all summer long. Sometimes even into the fall.

Would we love flowers as much if they were all tooting their own horns? I doubt it.

And yet, somehow, we’ve come to believe that we’re totally justified in singing our own praises. . .

The Bible verse about the lilies in the fields is touted as a beautiful example of how God provides for us all: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But I think it’s also a pretty great teaching on ego. Especially for us workaholics. Flowers toil not. Neither do they spin. And yet. . .they are more beautiful than the most beautiful of all manmade garments!

Every single day I have to hit the pause button on the ego’s attempt to make me feel better about myself. Because I know that, in the end, the ego only and always makes me feel worse about everything.

I have to remember that to try to take credit for something is to Edge God Out. E - G - O.

And then I remember the peonies and the lilacs and all the other flowers I love — and it’s a lot easier to let go of the old ego ploy of needing to take credit for and control something and instead ask Love to water whatever I am working on into bloom!

INTENTION: Pause for the peonies, and let Love bloom.

24.2.20

Someone posted this meme a few Sundays ago, and I reposted it on my dad’s Facebook and Instagram pages. (For those of you who don’t follow those, he’s @masterofmenace on Facebook and Insta and Twitter.)

I noticed the meme because I, too, struggle with Monday morning anxiety on Sundays, too. I also struggle with it on Monday mornings. And even on Monday afternoons when I worry that I didn’t get enough done on my Monday morning!

And since this is a Monday morning of a week so full it’s crazy, I was reminded of these meme and decided to use it as inspiration instead of irony!

So what to do with this anxiety?

Why work work work work work.

Start working and keep working.

[SOUND OF LOUD BUZZER]

Wrong Answer.

Pause.

And keep pausing.

And when I’m pausing breathe deeply and re-center. When I’m pausing remember that working like crazy isn’t the answer.

Pause and pray.

Pause and sleep.

Pause and love.

Pause and walk.

Pause and pet the dog.

Pause and eat a healthy meal.

Pause and read something that reminds me of what’s real: Which is always Love.

Pause and phone a friend.

And then do it all over again.

So today, when that Monday anxiety hits, instead of working harder, I will pause and live Love.

INTENTION: When anxiety strikes, do less. Pause instead. And love more.

23.2.20

I needed a break yesterday. I couldn’t spend one more minute looking at this screen. I was feeling emotional and exhausted in completely unrelated ways.

I had already gone for a long walk, but it hadn’t really done the trick. And now it was raining. I needed to do something — anything — to shift my mood.

My best friend with whom I am staying was going to the pet store. That sounded perfect. I needed some dog food for Allie. From there, somehow we ended up at Dillards.

When I was going through a really really challenging time financially about 15 years ago — and feeling so much shame and self-loathing — I used to say, “If I lose my business I’ll just get a job at Dillards.”

I said this because Dillards was the single most depressing place I could think of. The thought of being stuck inside that fluorescent-list dark hole filled with polyester and bad perfume felt like the only just penance for all of my life’s bad choices.

So as we walked into Dillards, I was flooded with that old feeling. I felt like I was going to jump out of my own skin. And then we ended up in the confirmation and prom dress section.

It was HUGE! Row after row after row of lacy white and garishly-colored polyester prom dresses. And suddenly my best friend began fake trying them all on over her clothes.

And everything shifted.

We started to laugh. I started to take pictures. And from there, everything shifted.

We ended up having SO MUCH FUN.

In Dillards.

Once again, the power of the pause proved to be the perfect heart-centered practice.

As I get ready to tuck into to another 15 hours of work today, I feel so much better about everything. Still a little bleary-eyed. Still needing a vacation. But filled with gratitude and joy and hope. And also knowing that, when it gets to be too much, I have the perfect antidote in my spiritual arsenal: The pause. Perhaps even a pause for. . .dare I say it. . .FUN!

INTENTION: Today I remember that pausing to laugh may be the most life-changing heart-centered practice of all.

22.2.20

A few days ago I stumbled across this quote: A photograph is the pause button in life.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Not because it was the most inspiring quote I’ve ever read. . .but because I wasn’t sure I really knew what it meant.

Did it mean that when you capture something on film you have paused life for a moment? Or that when you photograph, you pause your own life to look deeply at something else?

I think of photographs as many things. As some of you know photography is my avocation — and one of my go-to daily practices of joy. But calling a photograph a pause button didn’t really sing to me.

And yet. . .I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve also been thinking about what next month’s practice is going to be. I’m really enjoying having the focus of my whole year be more presence — and then creating a heart-centered practice each month to support that.

This morning, as I was looking for an image for this blog — I stumbled across this picture I took a few weeks ago. I was driving back from a meeting and saw this truck with the chile wreath and snow and the adobe with the blue windows behind it. It caught my eye and sparked joy.

But I’d already driven past it, So instead of just capturing that moment in my mind. I drove around the block to take this photo.

My joy in taking photographs did cause me to hit the pause button. First I paused to appreciate it. Then I paused my route home. Then I paused my drive to take the photograph. And all of that caused me to feel more present in the place and moment in which I found myself.

Looking back through these last few months, however, there are precious few moments like this. . . I have been spending so much time working on client projects — just staring at a computer screen and writing, building blogs, creating programs, and editing videos — that I feel bleary-eyed constantly.

So bleary-eyed that this whole stretch seems to have passed by in a blur of time.

Next month I hit the road again. I’ll be on the road pretty much non-stop until mid-summer. And yet I still have all this computer work every day. Aside from walking, how can I find ways to be more present right where I am.

I think it’s time to let photography be my pause button. To let photographing invite me into more presence right where I am. So I think that my heart-centered practice for March is going to be to “see” more deeply. To “see” from my heart. To “see” people and places and flora and fauna. To “see” the presence I wish to feel. To pause and photograph and see . . .and so be right where I am in joy.

That said, it’s still February for another whole week. And I’m still learning how to pause. To pause my work. To pause my compulsive working. To pause my worry. To pause my stress. To pause and be present right where I am . . .

That’s what this blog is, of course. Every morning, I hit pause before I hit play. . . and what a difference it makes!

INTENTION: Today I will remember to hit pause instead of play from time to time. . .so that my batteries can recharge.

If you're John Muir you want trees to

live among. If you're Emily, a garden

will do.

Try to find the right place for yourself.

If you can't find it, at least dream of it.

•

When one is alone and lonely, the body

gladly lingers in the wind or the rain,

or splashes into the cold river, or

pushes through the ice-crusted snow.

Anything that touches.

•

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite

understandable. But holiness is visible,

entirely.

•

Some words will never leave God's mouth,

no matter how hard you listen.

•

In all the works of Beethoven, you will

not find a single lie.

•

All important ideas must include the trees,

the mountains, and the rivers.

•

To understand many things you must reach out

of your own condition.

•

For how many years did I wander slowly

through the forest. What wonder and

glory I would have missed had I ever been

in a hurry!

•

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still

it explains nothing.

•

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

20.02.20

Today would have been my mom’s 103rd birthday.

Like me, my mom didn’t celebrate her birthday. So I won’t shout out a big Happy Birthday. But I will take this opportunity to pause and reflect on her this morning.

I found these two little photos a few weeks ago.

I’d never seen them before.

One of the oddities of being the kid of famous people is that shortly after we’re born, a photographer is brought in for a photo shoot because magazines and newspapers want to post pictures to satisfy the curiosity of their readers. Everyone wants to know what kids of famous people look like. So that’s what this was. A press photo shoot.

My mother and I were both, clearly, quite tense. You can see it on both of our faces (except when my dad is kissing my hand). You can see it in my little curled up toes. And the tension rippling through my mom’s body.

For my dad, on the other hand, this was just another day at the office.

Mercifully I don’t remember anything about it.

Now, of course, it’s way worse. People pay big money for photos of the kids of famous people. The kids of famous people have their lives perpetually disrupted by paparazzi. But then our lives then were much simpler. For the most part, we kids of famous people lived in relative anonymity. Thankfully!

But looking back I know that the pressure I constantly felt to live up to people’s expectations of me is something I learned from and shared with my mother.

It wasn’t good for either of us.

My mother and I had many of the typical mother-daughter challenges. But those were supercharged by the pressures of fame. Yet looking back, now I can see that all the good I learned from my mother far far far exceeded the challenging things we both had to overcome.

So today, on what would have been my mom’s 103rd birthday — the 20th day of the 2nd month of 2020 — I want to pause and remember my mother for many glorious gifts she gave to me!

My mother taught me:

• Discipline

• Kindness

• Compassion

• Curiosity

• Observation

• Humility

• Prayer

• Presence

• Stillness

• Style

• Joy

• Enthusiasm

• Persistence

• Gratitude

• And above all Love

I was fortunate to have a mother who never gave in to other people’s low expectations of her and also never gave in to her own social anxiety. A mother who broke the mold in her work and her personal life. Who never took no for an answer. Who began working at age 14 in order to do what she loved. Who believed in her own creativity. Who was an innovator decades ahead of her time. Who had a deep spiritual practice that she gave to me. Who thought that women could and should do anything. And who was grateful for every gift of her life.

So today on my mother’s birthday, I evoke her most puissant practice — the practice of gratitude. Today I am grateful for my innovative, stylish, spiritual, grateful, kind, observant, beautiful mother.

INTENTION: Today I pause in gratitude for the gift of a mother’s Love.

19.2.20

When I was a kid, from time to time the television station would “pause for station identification”.

Sometimes they’d put up a graphic with the station logo. In the old days of black-and-white TV, they’d use this Indian Head test pattern — often customized with the local station’s info.

These test patterns served a function — “down to the Native American chief, who was included for testing your brightness and contrast controls. The large black circle helped to adjust the image height, while the circles in the corners checked the focus of the beam at the edges, and so on. . .”

Today I had to chat with this blog’s tech support first thing in the morning because the settings haven’t been functioning correctly. To tell the truth, they still aren’t. But we figured out a workaround.

I have to adjust the size of the page to get it to work. But it’s so tiny I can hardly see what I’m typing. And if I make it bigger, it doesn’t work correctly.

The tech was happy we fixed it, but he told me that he’d send the info to the engineering department so they can take a look.

In other words, we McGyvered it.

Which we all do. . .a lot.

When things don’t work correctly in our lives, but we have to keep doing whatever it is we’re doing, we usually just jerry rig our lives and limp along as needed. Until one day things catch up with us and suddenly nothing works.

What could have been solved by pausing when needed now grinds everything to a complete halt.

In the early days of TV, they created these test patterns so that things didn’t slowly slip out of whack until it all broke down. They tested all the functions and made sure everything was working well. They paused for station identification.

In our fast-paced world, we’ve stopped checking our test patterns and pausing for spiritual station identification.

And it’s not serving us well.

So today, instead of squinting at a blog I can barely see so that I can just get it posted, I am going to not only pause writing (after I send this to my blog provider for their edification and amusement), but I am going to use this as an excuse to run my own test patterns and pause for station identification.

Am I out of focus?

Am I in alignment?

Am I not as bright as I could be?

If so, how do I focus, realign, get brighter?

To answer those questions, I may have to tell myself and others: “Please pardon the interruption while I pause for station identification.”

My name is Victoria Price. I am here to express Love to everyone I meet. I am here to live Love. To lean into Love. And to keep leaning into Love.

Today, I pause to re-calibrate my screen and re-identify in Love.

INTENTION: Today instead of powering through, I will check in and pause when needed for spiritual tech support and station identification.

18.2.20

I love it when a practice gets used — and I can see that “it works”.

Yesterday my plane was “grounded” for two hours by what seemed like a pretty silly repair. A two-hour delay because two seats wouldn’t recline! And there were extra seats on the plane where the displaced folks could have been seated.

It took five guys with some pretty major screwdriver sets to fix them — and many of us missed our connections to our next flights. Including me.

Which resulted in spending two and a half hours in an airport waiting for luggage and a night in a less-then-stellar hotel from which I am writing my blog. . .before heading out back out to the airport!

And I had a smile on my face the whole time. So much so that every customer service rep I met commented on it.

“I can’t believe you’re smiling.”

“Thank you for smiling.”

“You’re so nice about this.”

Well, here’s one thing I’ve learned living on the road: I have to be flexible and figure out how to go with the flow. Because if I’m not, who’s going to be miserable? ME!

Things change — and if I don’t find a way to make peace with that, I’m not going to have any peace of mind.

So I smiled when there was no flight to catch. I smiled when I was told my luggage could take two hours to arrive. I smiled when my meal voucher was $12. I smiled when the hotel shuttle took half an hour. I just smiled.

Because I was grateful to get my luggage. I was told I might not have it at all.

I was grateful my dog sitter wanted to keep Allie another night.

I was grateful for a shower and a comfy bed.

I was grateful for the $12 toward my dinner, which was actually quite delicious.

And I was grateful to stretch my legs for two hours after being on a four-plus hour flight and two more hours on the tarmac.

I might have been grounded, but my spirits were soaring. Why? Because of all this practice I’ve been doing.

I keep practicing choosing Love. I keep practicing living Love. I keep practicing living as if I already am the person I want to be. I keep practicing experiencing the life I want to experience.

That’s what happened last night. Instead of being grouchy or pissed off or irritated, I had a nice night. Why? Because living as if we feel the way we want to feel actually makes us feel the way we want to feel. Because leaning on Love makes us feel Love. Because heart-centered practices help us live in our hearts — where everything feels so much better.

So now, when I don’t feel like practicing my pause, or being present or being still — things that sometimes fell a bit more challenging — I will remember how this experience felt. . .and I will live as if I always love the practice.

INTENTION: Today I will be grateful for all the ways these heart-centered practices have helped me rediscover my own heart.

17.2.20

Today is Presidents Day in the United States, so my inspiration comes from a former Vice President who has dedicated himself to being an activist for climate change: Al Gore.

I love this quote — especially for right now. Turn on the news and you can go from denial to despair and back again in a split second. Too overwhelmed by it all, we live in denial. But when we let all the bad news seep in, we can go from zero to sixty and instantly end up in despair.

The same holds true whenever we have a problem in our own lives. We try to float along in denial for as long as we can — and then, when we can no longer pretend whatever it is isn’t happening to us — wham, bam, we end up in despair.

What Vice President Gore says is so true. . .we need to learn to pause between denial and despair. And then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

But how? Well, not by focusing on the problem. Because all that does is keep is locked in the mindset that created the problem.

And not by trying to fix the problem. Because that still keeps us focused on the problem.

No. The pause needs to serve as a wake-up call to Love.

What does this mean?

Let me share a short excerpt from my upcoming book:

Despite living in what has been statistically proven to be the safest time in human history, studies show we are becoming more and more afraid. We are increasingly fearful people living on an increasingly fear-filled planet. This fear generates more fear-based acts, which, in turn, make us more afraid. So how do we break this cycle of fear? By inviting Love into our lives. Even when—especially when—we’re feeling afraid. To do that, we must remember that everything begins and ends with Love.

We are all born knowing how to love. Loving isn’t something we need to be taught. Being afraid, on the other hand, is a learned behavior. We learn to become fearful either by experiencing or hearing about something that makes us afraid. Fear is contagious. We catch the fear, and then we feel it. At which point rational thought goes right out the window.

Both Love and fear manifest as feelings. But they happen ass-backward. Love begins in the heart. We feel Love long before it occurs to us to quantify or understand or explain it. Fear is exactly the opposite. The heart-gripping feeling of fear begins in our heads and then courses through our bodies. Fear is a story told to us by the world; Love is the heart essence of all experience. We need to create heart-centered Love practices that replace our habitual patterns of fear.

Sound too simplistic? Stanford research scientist Alia Crum doesn’t think so. Dr. Crum believes that changing our minds can absolutely change our lives: “Our minds are not passive observers simply perceiving reality. Our minds actually change reality.” This means that the way we choose to experience life determines the life we live—not just today and not just for ourselves. The reality of our individual and planetary futures is a direct consequence of whether we choose Love or fear today!

So now you can see why I Al Gore’s quote resonates with me so much. We HAVE to break the pattern of this pendulum swing between denial and despair — by learning to pause in the middle. . .and when we do pause, then invoking a heart-centered practice that realigns us with Love.

Pausing becomes the portal to heart-centered practice. Heart-centered practice realigns us with Love. Love breaks the pattern of denial to despair and back again. And true activism is led by Love which breaks the hopeless mesmerism of fear.

That’s what I’ve been working on this month. But let me be clear: The “do something about it” is

1) The pause: The pause breaks the pattern.

2) The practice: Developing heart-centered practices realign us with Love.

From there, and this is the kicker, Love does the work — not us.

We are notoriously unreliable. Left to our own devices, our best intentions usually get us right back where we started. . .in a fear-engendered habit that often lands us right back in that denial to despair and back again.

So these practices are all about realigning ourselves with our original language — which is Love. And then, by pausing and practicing, pausing and practicing, breaking the fear and leaning into the Love that loves our world back whole.

Remember “our minds change reality”. The world is our movie. Do we want to direct that movie from Love or fear?

I choose Love.

INTENTION: Today I pause and “do something”: I choose to listen to Love.

16.2.20

This year’s blog theme is Living Love. . .reflecting on the heart-centered practices at the core of my new book (coming out in April).

This weekend here at Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, I have had so many amazing conversations about living Love as it relates to growing up with Vincent Price as my father. The sweetness and generosity of spirit and deep respect that has been reflected back to me this weekend has truly been overwhelming. Last night at 8PM fans filled a tent when they could have been doing something far more festive, to hear me tell stories about my dad and ask the most amazing questions. It warmed my heart so deeply.

And here in Charlotte, four people showed me their incredible Vincent Price tattoos.

I remember the first time I saw a Vincent Price tattoo. I was blown away that someone would want to put a tattoo of my dad — a man they had never met and never would meet — on their body. Not because I don’t understand tattoos. I have tattoos all over my own body. But because it seemed such a commitment to put a person on your body. (Mine are all symbols or words or birds or flowers or or or. . .but not people.)

When I first began seeing people’s Vincent Price tattoos, I came home and asked both my friends and strangers this question: If you “had to” put a tattoo of a famous person you would never meet on your body, who would you choose?

The answers I usually got from non-horror fans was Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa.

Wow! I thought to myself. My dad is in pretty lofty company. . .

But the more I thought about it, the more I heard stories of why my dad means so much to people, the more I understood horror fans and their deep love for the genre and its icons, the more I got it.

It’s all about living Love.

The whole point of my book is that so many of us are taught to view our lives as problems to be solved. When we feel unaccepted, when we feel less than, when we can’t break a bad habit, when we don’t feel good about ourselves — we compare and despair. And then we set about trying to fix that problem.

What that means is that our foundation is fear. Fear that we will never be accepted, that we will never feel as good as, that we will never stop eating too much or spending too much or drinking to much or whatever habit we’ve been trying to break. Fear that we will never feel good about ourselves.

We have put our problems front and center and they are driving the bus of our lives.

I spent years like that.

Until I discovered the power of heart-centered practice — of living as if Love was driving the bus. (Which it always is. . .but we’re so focused on the problem that we don’t see it.)

This happened because of my dad. I began talking about my dad’s joy, my dad’s willingness to say yes to life, his open-hearted approach to trying new things, his open-minded approach to people from all walks of life and cultures.

But the only way I could bring that joy into my life was to practice it. To practice joy. Not talk about wanting more joy, but being more joyful.

So for 20 minutes a day, I did just that. And it worked. . .

Instead of talking about feeling more joy, for at least 20 minutes a day I felt more joy.

For 20 minutes a day, I KNEW Love was driving the bus.

That evolved into a life that is all heart-based practice. And so now, when I feel like I am too problem-focused, I begin a new practice. Like this year’s practice of presence.

Well, as it all turns out, going to horror conventions like this one has become an essential a part of my joy practice. Because in talking with my dad’s fans about why they love him and what they mean to him, we’re all engaging in a deep dialogue about Love.

How often does that happen in the world?

Seriously.

Do you talk to your bank teller or tax preparer about how much you love the way they care for your finances? Or the pharmacist about how much you love the relief they are providing you? Or your auto mechanic about how much you love the new carburetor they’ve installed?

I’m guessing no.

But here at horror conventions, we all talk about Love. Love of a genre, a film, an experience, an actor.

It’s all Love here at horror cons. And that’s am amazing feeling.

And so now, when I meet people who have my dad tattooed on their arm, I recognize it for what it is: Living Love.

My dad serves as a reminder that living Love is what we all want, what we are all here to do. And so each time I see a Vincent Price tattoo, I feel like my Circle of Love has expanded. I live with my dad’s Love every day. But, it all turns out, so do a lot of other people. The folks who have chosen to tattoo my dad on their bodies live with him as close to their hearts as I do. And hundreds of thousands or millions of people love my dad. How cool is that? And we get to share that Love with one another.

What a great model. . .What if we all were as open-hearted in sharing what we love with one another as Vincent Price fans are with me? It would be a pretty awesome way to live!

I’m thinking we should all give it a try. Maybe you’re not ready to tattoo your accountant or car mechanic or child’s teacher onto your arm. But you can express your gratitude and joy for their presence in your life through your words and your actions. Maybe you’ll never see the person you sat next to on the plane or the bus or the subway again. But you be kind in your words and demeanor.

This is living Love. And it’s what we were built to do.

I learned this from my dad and from horror fans — and living this way has changed my life.

So why no try it? You’d be amazed at how it will change your life.

INTENTION: Today I will remember to tattoo my gratitude and appreciation for everyone I meet on my heart and express it in my words and actions.

15.2.20

to give pause: to cause (someone) to stop and think about something carefully or to have doubts about something

The phrase to give pause came to me last night — and I knew it was what I would write today’s blog about.

It came to me after the loveliest conversation with a couple named Travis and Amanda.

Travis and Amanda gave me pause. They cased me to stop and think about something carefully. They brought tears to my eyes and love to my heart.

And all of this after I had had doubts about something.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know how busy I’ve been. So I was worried about taking five days “off” for this horror convention I’m attending in North Carolina. How could I keep up if I was flying for two full days with no Wifi to work. and attending the convention for three days and nights???

Yesterday, when I came down to set up my table, Travis and Amanda were waiting for me. They had the loveliest energy. They were beautiful inside and out.

We talked about my father and his movies. We talked about about spirituality and sharing the message of Love. We talked about North Carolina and the kindness of the people. We talked about how precarious things feel in the world right now.

They told me that they had driven an hour and a half to see me that night. They told me they read my blogs. They told me what these blogs and my books mean to them.

And then they said something to me about what and how I have written in my books and blogs that, well, gave me pause.

It stopped me in my tracks with its kindness and depth and sincerity and Love.

It — they — brought tears to my eyes.

And I knew that I was in the right place this weekend — that whatever “work” I need to get done will get done. As it always does.

I knew this because Travis and Amanda reminded me that the real work is always living Love, sharing Love, being Love.

None of us can ever know how or why something we do affects anyone else. Whether it’s something we write, something we say, something we do, or just our presence in the world. But every single one of us has the opportunity to connect with our fellow human beings in Love wherever we go, whatever we do.

When we do, it can feel like this photograph I took a few winters ago — like sunlight shining through a gap in the trees in a dark forest, illuminating life with hope.

We can’t move through the world trying to have this affect so that we or someone else will feel better. Living Love isn’t about results. It isn’t about doing or saying anything in particular. Living Love is, well, like how I felt in the presence of Travis and Amanda. Their quiet calm generous loving energy set the tone for my entire evening.

Every other conversation — including a joyful 15-minute chat with an incredibly interesting 12-year-old boy named Payton — was infused with the living Love that Travis and Amanda had brought into a very busy room of people setting things up for a very busy night.

I may write about living Love. But sometimes I forget to live that Love. I get busy being busy and I forget to love. But here’s the beautiful thing about Love. One moment in its presence, and Love resets our equilibria. Love loves us whole.

It’s a beautiful circle. Travis and Amanda found me because Travis loves my dad’s work. They read what I wrote because of my dad. But what I write about living Love resonated with them because that’s what they do. They live Love. And on a night when I might have forgotten that living Love is what it’s all about, they showed up living Love and reminded me that that is why I’m here. Just as I hope I reminded them — and am reminding them in this blog — that that’s why they’re here. And it’s why we’re all here.

It’s easy in this dark world to forget that darkness isn’t the reality. It’s easy to forget that all it takes is the earth turning on its axis for us to see the sun — and that the sun in always there. As Love is always there. Loving us whole.

It’s easy for us all to feel to scared, too busy, too lonely, too isolated, to freaked out, too discouraged, too disheartened, too downhearted to remember that all all all all all we are here to do is to love. To live Love. To just show up to one another and our lives in lovingkindness. And that when we do, Love does what Love does. What it did last night in my life through the presence of Travis and Amanda. Love loves us all whole.

INTENTION: Today I will express my gratitude for Travis and Amanda and Payton and Eben and Dylan all the other beautiful individuals here in North Carolina who have shown me such lovingkindness by living Love in every interaction, every smile, every moment of gratitude. Today I will live Love.

Valentines Day 2020

I am not spending Valentines Day with my Valentine. She’s in New Mexico and I’m in North Carolina. (Her name is Allie and she’s my beloved 25-pound fluffy white Doodle. I even wrote a blog about her last Valentines Day. You can read it by clicking here: What My Funny Valentine Teaches Me About Love.)

But in a way, because I’m at a horror convention, I am with my Valentine. Because I’m spending the weekend with my beloved dad and his beloved fans.

You know, the first things we learn about Love, we learn from our parents.

And what I learned from my dad is that Love is never too busy to love.

Both of my parents were always working. Their jobs took them away from home for long stretches of time, and when they were home, they were always busy doing the things they loved at home. My mom was constantly remodeling the house or framing paintings for Sears. My dad was gardening, tending his orchids, caring for his art collection, reading, or learning lines.

But while my mom didn’t like to be interrupted while she was working, my dad was never to busy to stop and give me a hug, listen to what I wanted to share, and then show me what he was doing and patiently explain it to me.

I loved that! I loved the feeling that no matter what my dad was doing, or how much he loved it, he was never too busy to love me.

And so, from my dad, I learned that Love is never too busy to love. Love never feels interruptd Love is actually expansive, rippling out more and more love around it.

But in my own life, I’m afraid I’m much more like my mom than my dad. I don’t like being interrupted in my work.

And yet, when I’m at a horror convention, where my “job description” is to be as much like my dad as possible — I always have time to stop and share the Love. To listen in lovingkindness and genuine interest, to share stories of love about my father, to be present to how much others love my dad.

And you know what? When I’m at a horror convention, I usually feel like my best self. Open hearted and expansive and full of Love.

So why aren’t I more like that in my daily life?

Good question! My mom would say, Because you have too much on your plate. If you keep letting yourself get interrupted, you’ll never get everything done!

But my dad would say — Try it. You’ll like it. Others will like it. We’ll all like it. We’ll all feel loved and loving. And let Love take care of the rest.

Which one am I going to choose? Well, that’s the beauty of committing to these practices of living Love like pausing and presence. I get to look at what has come to seem “acceptable” in my life, and then really decide whether I still want to accept it.

So what better day than Valentines Day at a horror convention to decide to try it my dad’s way? And if I feel anything like I felt as a little girl, he’s right. We will all like it.

INTENTION: Today I will pause to Love and keep pausing to Love. And I will let Love take care of the rest.

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still

for once on the face of the earth,

let’s not speak in any language;

let’s stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victories with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

- Pablo Neruda

12.2.20

About three winters ago, I spent almost three weeks on the coast of Northern California as it was being lashed by huge storms. Trees came down. The power was out for over 24 hours. But whenever the sun came out, Allie and I walked and walked and walked along the coast.

I became obsessed with looking at the waves. I was writing my book, The Way of Being Lost — and I was not only writing about my mother, but I was in a place that my mother had absolutely loved.

My mother always told me that her favorite thing in the world to do was to watch waves—waiting for that infinitesimal moment when one is about to crest before it begins to crash. “That’s the most beautiful moment in the world,” she’d said to me once.

Walking the bluffs, as I watched fifteen-foot waves rolling like thunder toward me, I felt like I was trying to see the waves the way my mother saw them. I photographed them obsessively, and would go home and look at the images.

It was while looking at this image that I got it! I saw what she had always seen.

As waves begin to swell and build to a crest, there is a brief instant of anticipation as the wave is at its height—right before the wave crashes down and the water curls back upon itself and rejoins the ocean again. It’s as though everything pauses for one exquisite moment of power and release. And in that pause, there is a transparent luminescence where the water belies its illusion of solidity, and you can see right through the wave to the light beyond. The sky and the water are all one.

All One.

Something cracked open in my heart at that moment. I saw through the seeming solidity of my memories of my mother to the Love I had been waiting my whole life to really feel from her. And we — my mother and I — were oned in Love.

That is the power of the pause.

It allows us to shift our perspective on what came before and to release it into a powerful new form.

It is a moment of luminescent oneness where all the energy of our lives harnessed into what is possible.

That is why I have dedicated this month to practicing the pause — and harnessing the power of what is possible in Love.

To pause is to live Love.

INTENTION: Today I harness the power of what is possible by pausing in Love.

11.2.20

This is a photo my dad toward the end of the movie, The Song of Bernadette.

Last night the story of Bernadette was brought to mind at an event hosted by two dear friends — Perdita Finn and Clark Strand, who have written a book called The Way of the Rose.

Last year I read the story of Franz Werfel’s harrowing escape from the Nazis across the Pyrenees, and his vow to write the story of Bernadette if he made it out alive. He did — and during the early 1940s (as World War II raged) The Song of Bernadette because first a best-selling novel, then an Oscar-winning movie, and finally a hit Broadway play.

Often when I am at horror conventions, fans surprise me by telling me that this (non-horror) movie is one of their favorites — and that my dad’s performance at the end always moves them.

My dad plays the Imperial Prosecutor Dutour, one of the many people who does not believe Bernadette’s vision of The Lady and acts to silence her and to close down the Grotto and its healing waters. But at the end of the film, dying from cancer of the throat, her realizes his error — the error of his whole life — and finally breaks down at the Grotto and prays to Bernadette.

You can click here to see a clip of that scene:

PRAY FOR ME BERNADETTE

For most of us, it usually takes something extraordinary — as Richard Rohr would say, great love or great sorrow or great tragedy — to wake us up from this human fever dream of pride, prestige, possessions, power — and realize that there is something else. For many of us, that wake-up call is the first time that we hit the pause button on the treadmill of our human existence and recognize, as my dad does in this scene, that we have lost the Thread of Love.

Right now, the whole world is having this kind of wake-up call. Thank goodness. And it does not feel easy. In fact, almost everyone I know is really struggling right now, and so is the whole planet.

In the face of all that is wrong and scary and out of control, how do we find the courage to recognize that the answer is Love? Doesn’t that seem pie in the sky? Like praying to a Big Pink Unicorn surrounded by fairy dust to end world hunger or cure coronavirus?

Nope.

The whole problem is that so many of us have lost the Thread of Love and have made most of our life decisions from a place of fear. And it’s only when life hits the Pause Button for us that we recognize that living Love is the only thing that will change anything.

And here’s the good news: Not only can living Love change our lives, it can heal our planet.

I wrote this in my upcoming book — Living Love: 12 Heart-Centered Practices to Transform Your Life:

The whole human “problem” boils down to this: we have seen our little individual life and other people’s little lives as problems to be solved and life as a problem-solving journey. We go through our lives afraid of what we see and try to fix it. When we do, we lock ourselves into the illusion of separation from each other and from our planet. By practicing Love, we shift all that. We free ourselves from the solitary confinement of our false separate selves and invite Love in to widen our circle of compassion. More than ever, we all need to wake up to Love, to practice Love, and to live as what our True Selves know is true: each and every single one of us was, is, and always will be Love.

This is exactly what my dad’s character learned at the end of The Song of Bernadette.

This is what I learned from the unconditional love I felt from my dad as a little girl.

This is what I have learned more recently from the Monster Kids who have embraced me in love and taught me the meaning of heart tribes.

This is what I learn whenever I have the privilege of spending time with young people who are changing the world through their courage to speak the truth about the planet and people they love and are constantly living Love.

And this is what I learn every day through my heart-centered practices of joy, presence, pause, gratitude, surrender and more.

Today and every day, we all need to keep living Love. No. Matter. what.

INTENTION: Today and every day I will keep living Love. No. Matter. What.

10.2.20

In my search for photos to spark the joy of this blog each morning, I have been taking quite the journey through my recent past.

Yesterday I stumbled across a series of encounters with a turtle. They brought a smile. And then today, in looking for some wisdom about pausing, I found this quote.

And so today here is some turtle wisdom about pausing — and how we humans aren’t quite sure what to do with turtle wisdom or pausing.

I remember seeing this turtle in the road on a morning walk. It was early in the morning on a road that led into a big shopping center. It wasn’t busy. But it would be soon.

To be honest, I couldn’t really tell if the turtle was moving or not. If it was moving, perhaps it would reach its destination before the road became busy. Perhaps cars would notice the turtle and avoid it. But what if they didn’t and ran the turtle over?

I decided I should move the turtle.

Then I was struck by a whole other dilemma. If I moved the turtle and it was headed someplace in particular, who was I to disrupt its journey? It certainly didn’t need me to interfere in its perfectly content turtle life.

In the end, I couldn’t bear the idea of the turtle being run over. So I picked up the turtle and carried it over to the grass.

As I did looked at it. I grew up with turtles and I’ve always loved them.

Underneath its shell it was vibrant yellow and brown. I looked at its head tucked away inside its shell and hoped I wasn’t scaring it.

I put it down gently on the grass about ten feet away from the road. Then I waited to see if it poked its head out. I waited and waited and waited. Eventually I realized that if I waited much longer, I would be late for work. And what would my excuse be? I was rescuing a turtle?

So I walked away. The whole encounter took about three minutes. A three-minute pause from my daily walk.

Do I remember anything else about that walk? Or that whole day for that matter? No!

But I do remember that turtle. I remember that moment with that turtle.

That’s what happens when we pause. When we really pause to connect with right where we are and whomever or whatever we are there with or for. For that moment life’s autopilot gets switched off and Love gets switched on.

I have no idea whether I did the right thing for that turtle, or whether it needed me to do the right thing at all. But I am grateful for that moment with that turtle. That brief excuse to pause and choose and connect and be. Together.

Talk a walk with a turtle, Bruce Feiler says. And behold the world in pause.

Indeed.

INTENTION: Today I will accept the invitation to whomever or whatever comes in to remind me the beauty and necessity of beholding the world in pause.

9.2.20

Last night, as I was trying to wind down enough to fall asleep, I promised myself that today’s blog would be short and sweet. With a full day of work ahead, this promise of brevity felt like a gift to myself.

When I woke up, I had nothing to write. Short sounded even better this morning than I did last night!

I looked through my old photos to see if any brought a message about pausing to mind. . .and finally, this one did.

It is this: Ferris Wheels (or Eyes as they are now called) have become symbols for cities all over the world. These beautiful circular structures that take you up into the sky and promise you a beautiful view.

For anyone who has struggled with a fear of heights, however, the view comes with a bit of a thrill and a small challenge. . .a challenge that kicks in when the Ferris Wheel pauses . . . and you find yourself dangling in mid-air.

I don’t know about you, but when that happens to me — there is always a minor moment of panic. Are we supposed to stop here? Is this thing going to break?

And then when you feel it move in the air, that simultaneous stomach lurch of thrill and dread.

That’s when I always have to remind myself that we’re stopped up here because someone is getting out down there. This is normal.

And sure enough, sooner or later, the wheel starts to move — and eventually we’re the ones getting out down there.

That’s my message to myself about pausing. When you have too much on your plate and you can’t seem to justify pausing, really it’s a kind of fear. Can I afford to pause? What if I pause and then I never get going again? I just have too much to do to be able to stop.

But when you do pause, you hit that reset button and everything that comes afterwards moves much more smoothly.

Fear feels different at different moments. But the antidote to fear is always Love.

Love is why we ride this ride. And fear is why we sometimes want it to stop. But fear is also sometimes why we won’t stop.

That’s when we have to remember that Love is the ride. And Love is the pause.

So today, I will remember not to fear the pause — and to let pausing in Love help me continue to love the ride.

INTENTION: Today I will love the pause and love the ride.

8.2.20

I grew up with three parents in show business. My dad was an actor. My mom was a costume designer. And my stepmother was an actress. From my early teens through my early twenties, I thought I wanted to follow in their footsteps.

Everyone told me I was a good enough actress — and my acceptance into the most prestigious acting programs in the world seemed to affirm that.

I had only two problems. The first was that I was so emotionally shut down that the head of the acting program into one of the top graduate schools into which I’d been accepted told me he thought I should become a diplomat not an actor. And the other, according to the head of the theatre program in my fancy and important college, was that I didn’t have the “killer instinct” to want to do act more than anything.

They were right. I knew it then, and I know it now. But it didn’t make it an easier to hear.

They were right because I didn’t want to act more than anything. I knew what the killer instinct to want to act more than anything looked and felt like. I grew up with people who had it. And that killer instinct didn’t feel good to the people (the children like me) who were on the outside of it.

And as for being emotionally shut down — well, I grew up in a family where we didn’t talk about problems, where I was punished if I cried, and where hugs and air kisses were the norm. Of course I was emotionally shut down! And that saved my life. Because shutting down like that became my safe place when I felt lonely or scared or like no one really cared because they were too busy to care or too scared to care or to self-important to care.

(Let me be clear: I’m not talking about my father here. . .My dad did want to act more than anything, but other than on screen, he wouldn’t have killed anyone to do what he loved. In fact, the greatest gift of his life is that he had the privilege of doing what he loved for 65 years — living a life in the theatrical, visual, and culinary arts. But he was absent — and to have the person you loved most not be there as much as you wanted was never easy.)

So. . . what does a young person with all this supposed talent to do what everyone in the world seems to think is the most important thing — be famous as an actor — do when she just can’t do it? Not can’t because she’s not good enough. Not can’t because she doesn’t know how or have the connections. But can’t because her heart — literally and figuratively — isn’t in it?

Well, I know what she does, because I did it. She flounders for decades, becomes a workaholic to prove her self worth, and struggles with debilitating self loathing for most of her adult life.

And then. .. she discovers the power of heart-centered practice. And everything — seemingly miraculously — changes.

That’s what happened to me. That’s what this new book of mine that is coming out in April is all about. And that’s why all this practice stuff is so darn important to me. That’s why I look forward to getting up at 4AM to write this blog each morning before a 16-hour day of work. Because this blog sets me straight and keeps me in this heart that took so long to open.

So this morning, as I woke up to write this blog — I found myself playing with the words Applause and Pause.

My whole young life I sought the applause. And even long after I let go of the desire to do something publicly, I wanted the metaphoric applause of an outside audience telling me that I was good at something. A boss thinking I was talented. Readers or viewers telling me I was a good writer. Partners telling me I was the best partner. I needed and wanted something or someone outside of me to make the inside me feel better.

When that finally shifted, well, that’s when my heart finally cracked open.

Now — even though I do find great joy in inspirational speaking. . . which often comes with applause — it’s the inspirational part that brings me joy.

You see, I never know what’s going to happen or exactly what I’m going to say when I get up on a stage and speak. Because when I get up there I take a moment to feel what’s going on in the room in my heart. (Something the younger acting me had no idea how to do.) In other words, I pause. And then I get out of the way and let whatever needs to come through me for the people in the room to hear. And so when the applause comes at the end, it never feels like it’s for me. It feels like it’s an expression of love for the exchange of Love that just took place between us all because of us all. And because of Love. Not me. And that feels fantastic.

All that younger ego is gone. Replaced by a lot of window cleaning so that I can continue to be the clearest transparency for Love and inspiration possible.

And here’s the key to it all: The Pause.

Before I go on stage, before I open my mouth, I pause. In that pause, I listen with my heart and I invite whatever needs to come through me in love to be met by love to become an exchange of Love.

That’s what I saw my dad and all the other incredible inspirational speakers I have had the privilege to hear do. They invite an exchange of Love.

Stepping into that exchange is what turned me from a talented by shut down and self loathing aspiring actress into a joy practitioner, a Love practitioner, an inspirational speaker, an early morning blogger about presence, a writer of books about practice. It’s what transformed me from a seeker of applause into an invoker of pause.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: When we want applause, what we really want is Love. Turns out — applause doesn’t actually bring love. It just brings the desire for more applause. But pausing — well, that’s another story. When we pause, we invite Love. And when we do, Love does what love does. Love loves us whole.

This is living Love — and let me tell you, it’s so much better than applause.

INTENTION: Today as I work, I will remember to pause — not for applause — but to remember that all work is an exchange of Love. Today I pause to invoke Love.

7.2.20

I’m trying to remember my last full day off. Probably last month when I drove from Denver to Santa Fe.

I think that’s probably why I love driving. It counts as a day off — even if I’ve loaded up my car, walked myself and my dog, driven for long hours, unloaded my car, walked myself and my dog. It feels like time “off”.

I am so so grateful for all the work on my plate right now. Like my parents, I love my work. But unlike my parents, I am not a parent. And so — other than my dog and walking — I have no excuse to stop. So this means I can work from 4 AM to 11PM non stop. And wake up and do it all over again.

The past few days were bitterly cold. Yesterday morning, desperate to get outside and not be staring at a screen, I walked for fifteen minutes. It was all Allie or I could stand. Her paws and my cheeks were frozen — and we had to go in. So last night we went out again in the dark, because it had finally warmed up to above Arctic degrees. We walked and made two phone calls while we walked. And when I got home, I felt better. I felt better because I paused to walk and connect. When I don’t do that, I don’t feel much joy or connection.

I included this photo in my weekly email blast last Sunday. It’s of my dad and me on the set of a TV special he did (and for which my mom designed the costumes). It was called “An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe”.

I woke up thinking about it this morning for two reasons. Yesterday I had a very enjoyable work call with a friend and colleague from the Edgar Allan Poe world. We were discussing some fun possible collaborations. One of the last times I saw her, she had just found out that she and her husband going to be able to adopt a baby — like literally practically on the spot — right at the time of a big event we’d been planning for years. Life and work collided — and she managed to hold it together with grace. But two years later she realized that she had missed a lot of this baby’s early life because of work. So she took another job that now allows her to spend 20 more hours a week with her son. She sounded like a different person yesterday. Elated and overjoyed!

The other reason I thought of this picture was because my dad never ever didn’t have time to take a break and connect with other people. My mother and I — well, not so much. My mother was not as social as my dad, so her workaholism was much more tunnel visioned. Even her parenting of me sometimes felt to me like it was a job. I’m more like my mom in this way — and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Yesterday a friend sent me a number of texts and then finally emailed later that afternoon and said: Can you at least let me know that you got my texts?

No. I hadn’t. I barely see my texts, unless it’s a work name that springs up. I barely read my personal emails, let alone respond to them. I certainly never get to the Facebook messages I get. I barely remember that social media messaging exists. Why? Because I’m just trying to get through my work mail, my work to do list, my work work work.

Now let me say it again. I love my work. I am grateful to have more and more of it. More clients whom I really really enjoy. More speaking engagements. More events and tours I am planning. I love my work.

But I know that work is not everything — and so I am posting this picture as a visual reminder to myself to pause. Just like my dad did in this photo. He was on the set and I was there with my mom who was checking the costumes. He didn’t stop working. He didn’t stand up and tell everyone to take a half hour break. Why? Because he wasn’t the director. He was the actor. And he was there to work. I understood that. But he never ever made me feel as though I had come second to work. Although in truth, he was gone well more than 3/4 of my childhood. Yet I didn’t feel slighted. Why? Because of the feeling I had when I was with him. The feeling that I was deeply loved and so important.

That’s what I don’t do well at all. And that’s part of what I need to practice in this practice of presence and pausing of mine. Even if it’s only for a minute, I want to be present in Love to everyone I love. So that’s today’s intention.

INTENTION: Today I will make a conscious effort to be more present in Love by pausing to love.

6.2.20

Almost everyone I know is struggling with something. Whether it’s how to process all the bad news that seems to be pouring in from all over the world, health issues, financial issues, relationship issues, job issues, grief, loss or loneliness. Everything feels stirred up these days.

Last night in the wee hours, as I was praying about something, I began hearing very clear guidance. It was as though I was being walked through — step by step — everything that is Real and True. I heard loud and clear: You know this. And with every instruction, came this clear directive: It’s all Love. Everything is Love.

When we lose track of that — when we lose the Thread of Love — then everything goes wonky. But, as I heard over and over again last night: Love is All - in all - in All. In other words, Love lives in all of us and all of us live in Love.

As I took that in deeply last night, suddenly all the stress and discomfort I had been feeling faded — and I understood exactly what this whole practice of pausing is about. . .and that, in a way, everything that is so churned up in the world is the world saying loud and clear:

PAUSE, people! JUST PAUSE.

You see, when things are going well, we go through our days on Autopilot. We ignore the little signs, silence the still small voices, and don’t care whether we hear or don’t hear, speak or don’t speak the language of Love.

We begin to believe that Love is the next vacation or that pair of new shoes we want or a piece of warm flourless chocolate cake. We run around from pillar to post with our hair on fire and use that as an excuse for needing that vacation or pair of new shoes or chocolate cake.

But we ignore and silence and stop caring at our own peril. Because sooner or later everything that is unlike Love will surface. And sooner or later it will get bad enough — in one way or another — that we have to listen.

And then the question comes: What do we really believe? What can we really rely on? What are our foundational practices to quiet fear? Do we even remember how to listen for Love?

We ALL remember how to listen to Love. But let’s be real. We also all remember how to ride a bike, but it’s a lot easier if we do it every day. The same is true of living Love. When we practice living Love, we live Love. When we practice pausing, we feel more present. When we practice joy, we experience more joy. When we practice gratitude, we are more grateful.

Everything that is going on in the world is screaming for us to pause. To turn off our Autopilots and remember that Love flies the plane, not us.

There is not a place in the world that isn’t screaming STOP. When we were little kids, we would imagine digging through to the other side of the world and ending up in China. Right now, everyone is fleeing China. When we were little kids, the most remote, untouchable and pristine places in the world were the North and South Poles. Now we know that what used to be there is crumbling, iceberg by iceberg, into the oceans which are rising and filled with plastic. Whole continents are on fire. And countries that used to exist don’t and new alliances that we thought would save the world and last forever are already falling apart.

It’s all seemingly overwhelming. And that’s why we have to stop. The planet is begging us to learn how to press pause. All any of our fellow human beings want — even the ones who seem the most hardened and insensitive — is to love and be loved. To feel Love.

This practice of living Love is no longer optional. Being reminded of that was the gift of last night’s download about Love. I remembered why I do this — and why it matters. It’s not to make my own life a little less stressful or to ease pain and discomfort. It’s to commit to walking my talk and living Love every day — so that each encounter I have, each conversation I share, each email I write, each thought I think — expresses and extends Love instead of perpetuating fear. It’s so that I can show up a little more every day in Love and a little less ruled by fear.

This — no matter what the papers say or how we feel physically or mentally or emotionally about anything or everything — is always the day that Love has made. We can spend today turning to the right and left and right and left and going backwards and forwards and around in circles in fear and desire and anxiety and hope. Or we can practice being present to Love in everything we can do. And when we don’t know what to do, we can pause and listen for the Language of Love that is always speaking truth to us and loving us whole. Because that’s what Love does. Love always speaks true and always loves us whole. You. Me. Our neighbors and kids. Our friends and supposed enemies. Our world leaders. Our animals and plants. And the whole planet. Love loves us all whole.

INTENTION: Today I will remember that everything is Love. And when I lose that Thread of Love, I will pause and get quiet and listen for Love’s direction — remembering that Love is always speaking true and loving us whole.

4.2.20

YOU READING THIS: STOP

Don't just stay tangled up in your life.

Out there in some river or cave where you

could have been, some absolute, lonely

dawn may arrive and begin the story

that means what everything is about.

So don't just look, either:

let your whole self drift like a breath and learn

its way down through the trees. Let that fine

waterfall-smoke filter its gone, magnified presence

all through the forest. Stand here till all that

you were can wander away and come back slowly,

carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

Feel it? That's what we mean. So don't just

read this—rub your thought over it.

Now you can go on.

- William Stafford

Poetry has always brought me solace and helped me to learn how to pause. And this poem about pausing is one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets.

William Stafford wrote a poem a day. Rumor has it that when a fellow poet asked him how he did that — how he wrote such good poems so consistently — he said, “I’ve lowered my expectations.”

I love that. Because lowering his expectations wasn’t about writing bad poetry. It was about removing the pressure of perfectionism that paralyzes us.

I was talking with a friend the other night about memoir writing. She said that she takes memoir classes because they are a way to keep her writing. To have an assignment that allows her to keep finding her written voice. A voice to match her spoken ability to reach out with humor and insight and kindness and wit and clever observation and unpretentious erudition.

We all need something that keeps our creative lives moving forward. Blogging has done that for me, because blogging lowers my expectations. In fact, I begin every morning with not the slightest clue what I’m going to write or why I would even want to write anything. But I made this promise to myself this year to write every day about my practice of presence, and so far nothing has induced me to break it.

Poetry is one of my practices of presence. Reading a poem makes me pause. I am a super speedy reader, made even quicker by the speed-reading class my mother made me take in tenth grade. But you can’t read poetry quickly. What on earth would be the point? So poetry helps me pause and get quiet and listen beneath the words.

But this poem fairly demands that we stop. The title is its command: YOU READING THIS: STOP.

It tells us: Don’t just stay tangled up in your life!

It says: Don’t just look! Don’t just read, either.

I took this picture in Wales on a foggy November day a few years ago. I was supposed to be driving back to London to catch a plane. I took a slight detour to a forest someone had told me about and took a magical hike that I will never ever forget. That hike had the effect of this poem.

Many times that day I stood there till all that I was wandered away and came back slowly, carrying a strange new flavor into my life.

It was glorious! The strangely new flavored me that came back is someone I still know and love.

At the end of that magical day, however, I got lost on some back roads in the dark. And after finding my way back to the motorway, I ended up eating a dishearteningly bad dinner in a too brightly-lit rest area on the way to Heathrow.

Sitting there in that bleak place, I had a moment where I berated myself for having taken so long that day. I felt anxious. I had a rental car to return on time and a hotel to find and an early flight the next morning.

And then I remembered my day. The forest, the hike, the waterfalls, the river, the long views, the fog, the moss, the quiet places where I stood in silence. And I knew what was happening. The old me — the anxious timekeeper — was trying to push out the new me — the wanderer eager and willing to get lost and come back slowly carrying strange new flavors into my life.

Of course I am still both of those me’s. But the me I remember when I get lost, when I pause, when I practice presence and when I read poetry is the me I love to be.

So today I will honor that me and remember why we all need to pause and practice presence. Because when we do, we begin living Love and the person we have always thought we were and have longed to be surfaces and we can invite them back home to our hearts.

INTENTION: Today I won’t just stay tangled up in my life. I will pause and rub my thought over the poetry of living Love.

5.2.20

What’s the difference between the word stop and the word pause? I woke up wondering that.

I decided to look in my last two books, and I use the word stop all the time. I rarely use the word pause.

As anyone who drives knows, stop is a command. It asks us to cease and desist. I have spent a lot of time urging myself to stop. As with this quote from The Way of Being Lost, I am constantly reminding myself to cease and desist listening to the old stories about myself. To just stop behaving as if I have been programmed one way and that’s the one way it will always be. To stop listening to what used to be and learn to hear what is really true.

This practice of pausing stems from that urge to let go of old ingrained habits of being. But it’s much simpler.

A pause is brief. If you paused instead of stopping at a red light or a red sign, you’d probably get a ticket. A pause is more like a rolling stop, a brief break in the action.

But it’s that brief break in the action that makes all the difference.

A practice of pausing is so necessary doesn’t require rewriting the whole script. But it does invite us to hit the reset button — at least momentarily.

Most of my work these days is on the computer. I am looking at a screen for 3/4 of my day. It is often enervating. It can feel isolating. It seems depleting. But If I don’t do it, I don’t have a hope in hell of finishing my work. This is why I HAVE TO pause. I have to make myself get up and walk away from the screen and look out the window, pet my dog, jump up and down and shake out all the shit. I have to walk up and down some stairs or step outside and feel the air.

Now I also have to stop at the end of the day. Stop to feed the dog and myself. Stop and take a walk. Stop to run errands or get groceries. But when I have this much work, those stops are fewer and further between.

A pause can happen every fifteen minutes if needed. And sometimes that pause is the only thing that gets me through the next fifteen minutes without feeling like I’m going to jump out of my skin.

It’s the same with the big issues in our lives. The old stories we tell ourselves are true. To learn how to stop listening to them requires creating a practice of pausing. Because let’s face it — to change an old story is a challenge. We’ve believed a lot of lies about ourselves for a very long time. But if we can hit the pause button on those lies for fifteen second, and then a minute, and then five minutes, at some point we will be listening less to the old stories and letting the true stories come through more and more.

This practice of pausing is the real deal. It’s a life changer — one brief pause at a time.

INTENTION: Today I will stop listening to the old stories, stop living the old ways, stop believing the old lies, one brief pause at a time.

3.2.20

I have someone in my life who teaches me to pause every day. She doesn’t say a word. She just looks at me with her deep brown eyes and reminds me to pause. To stop doing whatever I am doing and to just be present with her.

Her name is Allie, and she is my constant companion. She’s a 23-pound poodle mix and she has been with me all four years on the road.

More than anyone, Allie knows how much I work. She knows it because I wake up in the morning and pull out my laptop to start writing or working. And so she always takes it upon herself remind me that this is NOT the way to start one’s day.

The way to start one’s day is by taking a moment to be with one’s dog. So she paws my hands as they type. And if that doesn’t work, she lies on top of the computer keys so that I can’t write. Then she looks at me until I look into her eyes, rub her ears and tell her how much I love her. Then she sighs and settles in beside me, wedged right next to me so I know that she’s right there with me.

During the day, when I’ve been working for too long without moving, she raises her head and looks at me with those eyes. Even if I’m glued to the screen, I can feel those eyes looking at me. And that’s when I pause, go over to her, look at her and rub her ears and tell her how much I love her.

Allie is my pause button. When I feel frantic about my workload, sometimes she jumps up into my lap and just looks at me. Then I hold her like a big furry baby and rub her belly until she lays her head against my chest and we both sign and relax. . .Some days this is my favorite joy practice of all!

Every day Allie not only teaches me how to pause, but shows me why it’s so important. The moment I stop whatever I’m doing to just be with Allie, I remember what’s important in the world. And it’s Love.

It’s always Love. When we pause, we remember Love. Allie is my tutor in living Love — and I am so so grateful that I have my own personal pause/paws button.

INTENTION: Today I will push my paws button and pause to live Love with Allie and everyone I meet.

2.2.20

This quote by Guillaume Apollinaire pretty much sums up the whole message of my next book.

Sometimes we need to pause all our pursuing — whether it’s identifying the problem, figuring out how to fix the problem, and then working on fixing the problem. Or figuring out what will make us happy and then planning our pursuit of happiness. Or trying to figure out what we need to do to succeed and then training ourselves to succeed and hiring other people to help us succeed and then doing whatever we can to succeed.

Sometimes we have to pause all that planning and doing and trying — anything and everything to feel “better” — and just be. . .Because when we do, guess what? We usually feel “better”!

We Americans are determined to pursue our happiness. But do we really take the time to just be happy? To feel joy?

That’s what was so revelatory about creating this daily practice of joy all those years ago. I kept talking about wanting more joy in my life. I kept saying that joy was my conduit to my heart, to connection with others, to my True Self. But all I did was talk about finding more joy.

Until I began practicing it.

When I began practicing joy, I began feeling joy. Even if it was only for 20 minutes a day at first. For those 20 minutes, I FELT JOY!

It’s the same with this practice of presence. now that I’m really practicing presence, I feel more present.

Now to be honest, since I have invoked this practice of presence, I also feel how unpresent I am most of the time. . .and that’s also teaching me just how vital it is to to learn how to pause to feel present.

So when we’re on a roll with our doing doing doing, we have to learn to hit the pause button on that doing. The thing is, sometimes we’re afraid of that. Afraid that if we pause, we’ll find a nest of vipers in our souls that we don’t want to look at.

And it’s true that sometimes we can unearth some ugly stuff when we stop doing. But whatever we find when we pause, it’s worth it. Because whatever it is we’ve been avoiding or delaying by all our doing will eventually find its way to the surface. So why not choose to look at it instead of avoiding it? My experience is that those ugly monsters we avoid are always less scary when we meet them head on.

But we can also discover great beauty and deep calm and profound joy when we pause. And so that is my intention for today (and everyday). More pausing. Less pursuing.

INTENTION: Today I will pursue less and pause more. Today I will stop trying to find presence, and I will let presence find me.

1.2.20

Today is the first of February — and I am dedicating this month’s joy-filled practice to learning how to pause.

Pausing means stopping long enough to remember what is underneath whatever stress or anxiety or imbalance or loneliness or irritation or worry we may be feeling.

So I searched my own writing to see if I had anything to say to myself, and I found this quote from my last book, The Way of Being Lost.

So, today, let’s all turn off the news, stop checking our emails or text messages or social media feeds long enough to just pause. To get quiet enough to hear that Love is always loving us whole. To know that we are always loved by Love. And to remember that underneath the fracas of our world there is always a foundation of Love emanating peace and balance and joy.

INTENTION: Today I pause whenever I am feeling frantic and remember to feel the Presence of Love.

31.1.20

When I started this blog about this month’s practice of presence, I was reacting to a long stretch of stress — of feeling like I was pushing myself through every day at a frenetic pace guided pretty much solely by my human will.

That just wasn’t working. . .I knew something had to shift. And so I fell back on a tried-and-true technique. I would commit myself not only to a practice, but to blogging about that practice.

We all need to feel accountable for our actions. Blogging keeps me accountable. And it’x worked. I’ve had to make some tough choices this month, and some answers I’d hoped to have and things I had hoped to have completed, well, I’m no further along than I was on New Years Eve a month ago. But what is different is my inner geography — and that’s what counts. This daily practice of presence and my morning blog have helped me shift from will to willingness.

The other night my best friend asked me — for probably the tenth time — to go to a sound healing meditation with her. I said no. I had too much on my plate. And then she told me what my no felt like to her — a rejection of something really important. And so I went. And it was wonderful.

But while I was there in that darkened room listening to two amazingly talented musicians pour themselves into this sound healing, I realized that I was wound up, as my dad used to say, “tighter n’ a drum”. Often I had to consciously unclench my fists or uncross my arms from chest and lay them flat with my palms up to receive the music. The next day my hands actually ached because I had been balling them up so tightly.

This photo from my seminary graduation came to mind — and realized that this whole month has been a practice of unclenching and opening. And that I can honestly say that through this practicing of witnessing my actions and thoughts as well as consciously being more present and then blogging about it, I have become less about will and more about being willing. Being open to whatever is — even if it not receiving a concrete answer or having that answer change more times than I can count.

That’s why I’ve known that I need to shift out of this particular iteration of my practice of presence and move into a new one each month of this year. The word I chose for 2020 can’t just be a word. It needs to be an active practice.

Yesterday that practice came to me. Next month’s focus will be pausing. . .consciously choosing to STOP whatever it is I am doing, to hit the pause button on whatever my monkey mind is blathering on about, and being present and still (to the best of my ability at the moment). So this is the last blog on this page. Tomorrow I begin a new page as I learn to pause and share my process and progress with this practice.

31 days of practicing presence — and blogging about it — and what I have learned is that every day is a conscious and often challenging unclenching of my fists and uncrossing of my arms and opening up of my heart and quieting of my mind. . .and then doing it over again. And what I’ve also learned (and I’m sure grateful for this because this is what my book coming out in April is all about) is that this practice stuff works. It really does make a difference. Because when we practice opening our hearts, our hearts open. When we practice unclenching our fists, our fists unclench. And when we practice living Love, we live Love. And even in a world filled with desperately horrible news, that makes all the difference.

Thanks for sharing this practice with me. Thanks for living Love in your comments and support and readership. Thank you for being you!! I am so grateful to be on this journey with you!

All Love. Victoria

30.1.20

This morning when I woke up, this was the first thought that came to me: “Love: You drive the bus today.”

The next thing that came to me was this silly image of my dad driving the bus in the infamous Simpsons Superbowl episode.

And then I breathed a huge sigh of relief — because it was the perfect way to start my day.

I needed this reminder that when I try to drive the bus of my life, I never ever enjoy the ride nearly as much as when I remember to let Love take the wheel.

You know, I’ve always found those “God is my co-pilot” bumperstickers a bit confusing. Clearly, if someone puts the word God on their car, they believe in a Higher Power for Good. So why would someone choose that Higher Power for Good to be their co-pilot? Why not let that Higher Power be the pilot?

Well, because that’s not how most of us humans are hardwired. We like to be in control. We plan, we prep, we do do do. And only when the accumulated stress of our planning and prepping and do do doing catches up with us do we wonder if there’s a better way.

I know there’s a better way. Whenever I remember to remove my own agenda from my day and lean into Love, things always go more smoothly. But how do we do this in a world that teaches us that our ego agendas are the answer? It’s not easy.

That’s why I had to smile when I thought of this Simpsons photo. Because it reminded me of what I learned in the best moments of m childhood.

My mother made a point of never telling me anything very far in advance. She knew that the nature of my parents’ work meant that plans changed. And she didn’t want me to get my heart set on something and then be disappointed. That meant that I often didn’t know about a trip until a few days before. That I didn’t know when my parents would come home or how long they would stay. It meant that I often celebrated my birthday on a different day because my family was out of town on the actual day. And you know what? It was a pretty great way to grow up. I learned at an early age to turn my own ideas of what was “the best plan” in at the door and await further instruction. . .

Now does this mean that I was a docile sweet pliable child? Not hardly! I was stubborn and willful and had my own ideas about everything. But I could also see that when I was the most stubborn and willful, I was the most miserable. And that when I showed up to whatever love had on tap, I had a lot more fun.

My mother knew how much I adored my dad. She knew how much I looked forward to the times I got to spend with him. And she also knew that for a child whose father was absent a lot, love could get warped by wanting more instead of being grateful for what I had. As a result, I never look back on my childhood and wish that my dad had been around more. Instead I look back with gratitude for the deep love we shared.

And that shared love between my dad and me is why I feel that the Highest Power is Love. Love with the Capital L. No matter how scary the world may seem, Love is the only true Power there is. And that’s why — particularly when the fear is ratcheted up to defcon levels, we need to remember to let Love drive the bus of our lives.

So today, as I read the news and hear the fear reverberating across the airwaves, I am going to picture myself on that Simpsons bus letting Love take the wheel.

Does that mean that I’m just going to tune out and hope we drive through one scenic area after another? Nope. Letting Love drive the bus doesn’t mean we won’t go through some seriously dicey neighborhoods. Our lives are filled with scary stories and old stories and ghost stories. But when we let Love take the wheel, we let go of the idea what we have to have the answers for everything. Instead we lean in to Love. And when we do, fear’s icy talons let us go, little by little.

Sound crazy? Sure it does in this world of do, find answers, plan, prep, know. But it’s not. Love truly is more powerful than every scary news story put together.

And if you don’t believe me, I’ll leave you with the words of someone who believed so strongly in this Law of Love that he (and Love) changed the fate of an entire subcontinent:

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily existence. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain a mental state of nonviolence. It is a disciplined life, like the life of a soldier. The perfect state is reached only when the mind, body, and speech are in proper coordination. Every problem would lend itself to solution if we are determined to make the law of truth and nonviolence the law of life. Just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the laws of nature, a man who applies the laws of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders. Nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than forces of nature like, for instance, electricity. The law of love is a far greater science than any modern science. - Mahatma Gandhi

29.1.20

According to my iPhone, I have taken almost 9,000 photos of birds like this one I took of a green heron in the Hudson Valley. Why? Because I adore birds. Birds make my heart soar. Seeing them, learning about them, and watching them fly brings me such immense joy!

For many years, bird photography was one of my go-to practices of joy. I thought of myself as a bird paparazza. I loved capturing shots of birds just being birds in all their beauty and mundanity. I loved wandering through nature preserves and marshlands and forests looking and listening for birds.

But when I began living on the road, schlepping a long lens or birding camera became too difficult while living out of a suitcase and having to bring anything valuable in my car in and out of motels every night. So I sold my birding camera and long lenses stopped taking pictures of birds.

Yesterday I realized something startling. Some of my joy practices have become very very stale. As a result, I am feeling less and less joy.

The good news is that I find more joy in my work and also that even when I feel less joy, I am not totally depressed or downhearted. My joy practices still sustain me because joy is what opens up my heart and my connection to Something Larger than just little old me. But the flatness that I’ve been feeling lately is directly related to the flatness in some of my joy practices. I recognized that I need to reinvigorate my joy!

I have a Facebook friend who takes glorious photos of birds. And just seeing her images makes my heart sing. So I’ve begun thinking about ways to bring this old practice back into my life.

Now the thing for me is that I always need to check myself. If I hear myself saying that to find joy I need to buy this or that, it’s a big red flag. I know that joy cannot be my excuse for spending money that I don’t have. So I’m not rushing out to buy some new piece of equipment. But I am looking at why I miss “my birds” so much — and what I need to do to rekindle the kind of joy they brought me in my daily life.

We ALL need to keep our practices fresh. . . In fact, as January draws to a close, I plan to end this month’s blog about presence and move into February blogging a bit differently. Still a joy-filled practice of presence, but one with a different focus or method to be posted here. What will that look like? I have no idea. . .So that’s what I’ll be thinking about these next few days. Because now I know that keeping our practices fresh is what keeps us practicing. And practicing keeps us living Love. And living Love centers us, heals us, and connects us to one another from heart to heart.

So ask yourself: Are you keeping your practices fresh? If not, what can you do to rekindle your joy or your balance or your gratitude or your forgiveness or your yoga or your meditation or your art or your movement?

I can always learn something from the birds I love so much: Sitting on a branch staring into the middle distance can be a beautiful practice. But eventually it comes time to use our wings and soar!

28.1.20

The other day I wrote about quieting our monkey minds — and in a Facebook comment, someone wrote: “I love my monkey mind.”

That made me laugh out loud. Because the fact is that all of us love our monkey minds . . . until we don’t.

Until it’s 2AM and then 3AM and then 4AM — and we can’t get the words to stop. . .

Until we’re on a plane and filled with anxiety, or preparing for a presentation and unable to focus.

Until our quality of life is crap because our inner monologues sound like Doctor Strangelove meets James Joyce meets I am The Walrus. Goo-goo-g’joob.

Let’s be real. We have given our monkey minds permission to exist because we are enamored with our own thinking, because we believe we are fascinating, because we think that thinking will solve all our problems, because we don’t believe we can bear to be still. Oh — and about a thousand more perfectly rational reasons.

Yup. Our monkey minds would have us believe that they are the emanation of rationality itself. And rationality is what will save the day. Until rationality feels about as useful as a parachute made of Kleenex and all we want is to feel some peace.

So we try to get quiet and that’s when we actually hear the crazy ass monologue of multisyllabic words and the names of kids we knew in elementary school and a plot line from the latest Netflix binge fest and one sentence a friend said in passing and and and. .

The rest of the time we don’t hear our monkey minds. But there they are, chattering away at us lie the stock market ticker at the bottom of financial stations on the telly. Keeping us company, or so we believe.

But if any of you have been up in the middle of the night for hours on end, or doing a meditation, or taking a quiet walk, you know how challenging turning that ticker tape off can be.

And that’s where presence comes in. Presence can take a lot of forms: Being present to one breath in and one breath out. Being present to one word — for me it’s always Love — that calms you. Even just being present to acknowledging that your monkey mind is trying is on a roll. . .and not letting it freak you out.

And then, above all, finding gratitude for however little glimpses of quiet and peace come through.

For those of us who love nature, that’s often our main portal to peace and presence.

And so today, as I try to make peace with my own monkey mind, I am sharing a wonderful poem by the wonderful Wendell Berry. May it bring you and your monkey mind a little peace today.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

27.1.20

Yesterday was a challenging day — I’m guessing for the whole world. . .

Everyone I talked to was having a tough time. Me included. Between the news and our own lives, we were all struggling. And yet, everyone kept showing up in love.

After posting a photo and blog about having nothing to say, so many people took the time to say kind and encouraging words. And in my conversations with my friends about our own difficulties, we kept at it — not content to just sink into the morass of depression and despair.

The thing is — when we can’t quite get to what’s really at the root of our discontent, sometimes we have to dig deeper. And in most of my conversations yesterday, the digging deeper meant going back to a much younger time and doing some excavation there.

Often when we are feeling the most visceral discomfort about something that doesn’t seem to warrant that kind of intensity, its source is often something very old. And when we unpack it, we often recognize that the depth of the feeling isn’t commensurate with how we’re actually feeling now, but rather a stockpiled accumulation of old shame or sadness or fear that feels far weightier and more hopeless than we know the current situation to be.

This came through to me last night when talking to a friend, who was describing my response to a situation in very powerful terms. She said, “You felt like you were going to jump out of your skin. You couldn’t get out of there fast enough.” And I thought to myself, “Was that true?”

No. It wasn’t. I didn’t feel like I was going to jump out of my skin at all. Nor did I have the urge to flee. And yet that was the feeling she had about my experience due to the intensity of my emotional response.

So where was the disconnect?

The disconnect lay in the distant past. Unbeknownst to me, I had been triggered by some very old feelings of shyness and shame and social anxiety. And then I had come home and watched a show that was all about high school shyness and shame and social anxiety. And the two experiences had collided and landed me back in a very old version of me.

I woke up the next morning feeling shaky and sad and ashamed. And that old feeling was depressingly familiar. Not depressingly as in it depressed me to know I could still feel like that old me. But as in that feeling was a feeling of depression that overlaid itself on top of everything. I couldn’t pull off the caul that seemed to be covering me and my day.

It took some deep excavation to recognize the old childhood and teenage triggers of a kid who often didn’t feel like she fit in, but wanted to. And then it took this practice of presence to choose to be here now instead of staying back in an old story. Because those old stories are familiar, and they unconsciously overlay themselves on everything we do, every interaction we have, every person we meet. The question is — will we choose to be here now and leave those old iterations of us and them behind? Or will we fall for the familiar over and over again?

It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to let go of anything that isn’t presence. Of worrying about what others will say about us, about opportunities we’ll miss, about the risk of leaving when we’ve stayed for so long. But the only thing that really ever moves us forward is remaining present in what is happening right here and right now. And leaning on the Presence of Love. And letting ourself feel that right here, right now, we’re okay and Love is here.

That’s it. That’s all.

It’s not easy. But it’s the only way. Leaning on the Presence of Love is always the only way.

26.1.20

I’m flat out of things to say or write.

It’s Sunday. I’ve been working non-stop all week. I had a big presentation yesterday, and today I have another full day of work and meetings. So although I’m supposed to be practicing presence, the most present I can be is to acknowledge that I have nothing of any interest to say. But because I promised myself that I would write a post a day this month about presence, well I’m cheating.

Here’s my post. It’s a photo of my dad and me on a road trip in the 1960s. It has nothing to do with presence. The only way I am being present is to keep my promise.

So why am I posting a photo of my dad? Because everyone likes to see photos of my dad. And yesterday a friend mentioned how much she loved seeing my dad’s amazing outfits. So, when I had nothing to write, her words came to mind. . .

This is another way I am cheating. When I post photos of my dad that people love to see, I can avoid having to come up with something interesting to say.

But although I am cheating, I am consoling myself by saying I’m being honest about cheating and why: I have nothing to say and nothing to give today. I am trying to wrangle any remaining energy and enthusiasm I have left in my for the long day of work ahead.

And sometimes that’s the best we can do. We can be honest about the fact that our tanks are on empty. And if we don’t have the time and space to refuel, we can run on fumes and be honest about it.

This photo was taken in South Dakota on one of the many wonderful road trips my dad, mom and I took for his work on behalf of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the US Department of the Interior. My dad was a passionate advocate of Native American arts — and those trips were among the happiest times of my childhood. I suppose that’s why I love being on the road so much.

When we were on the road like this, my dad was so present. He was a workaholic — always someplace making a movie, buying or selling art for Sears Roebuck, on a 60-city lecture tour, making a commercial, filming a TV show. But when we were on the road together, we were really together.

Maybe this is why I live on the road now. I know what it’s like to be present on the road. I’m not so good at it when I’m off the road, as I am right now. Then I revert to being a workaholic. Just like both of my parents. So. . .perhaps this turned out to be a blog about presence after all.

Presence is a path of progress, not perfection. Today I feel far from perfect, but I’m being present to that. . .and posting a pic of my dad and me so others can enjoy it.

Happy Sunday everyone.

25.1.20

I took this picture in Manchester, England, on an early morning walk a few years ago. It made me chuckle.

I thought of it this morning while realizing that the more I have practiced presence, the more distractions have tried to clamor for my attention. Even my dream life has become so incredibly busy that I usually feel relieved to wake up to the relative mundanity of my usual seven-day-a-week, eighteen-hour-a-day to do list.

Have you ever noticed that when a business is in trouble, they suddenly inundate you with calls and advertisements and commercials? Miraculously, that subscription or product you paid full price for just six months ago, is on sale at 60% off!!! Well, I’ve often thought that mortal mind, the ego, the monkey mind, our false selves work the same way. The closer we get to letting go of some part of their job description, the more they try to convince us of their absolute necessity.

So, that’s what I have to remind myself when the inner chatter ramps itself up these days in my life. I look back on my state of mind a few months ago — that frantic stressed buzz that was my wakeup call to this practice of presence. And although I have been inundated with work — I can tell that I really am calmer and more present and more at peace. (Now my friends might argue otherwise, but I can tell the difference.) Kind of like this photo. It’s not plastered over with crap. Just a light-hearted flipping of the bird at authority — with Billy Idol, no less.

So, when you know deep down that you’re making progress, and yet it seems like you are being bombarded inside and out, remember that this actually IS a sign of progress.

No one likes to be rendered redundant — least of all our false selves which come to us for all life they have. But the louder they yell, the more consistent our practice needs to be. Until one day we realize that the yelling has ceased — and practice has brought us, as it always will, more of that peace that passes all understanding.

This is the beauty of practice.

Or, to riff on Billy Idol: We have spent so much time believing all the lies to keep the dream alive. When we practice, we begin to wake up from that dream — and remember who we really are and what it feels like to truly be alive in Love.

24.1.20

When I was sixteen, my mother sent me to Germany for a year to be an exchange student. The circumstances of my departure were not pleasant, and the trip itself was extremely long and a bit harrowing. So when I arrived to stay with my first host family (I was to live with them for six weeks while I learned German), I was anxious and stressed.

As the weeks went by — my stress eased a little. But when my homesickness and anxiety ramped up, I consoled myself with a lot of future thinking — if I can get through this week, then there will only be five more weeks here. After these five weeks, it will be four months til Christmas. After that. . .I would talk like this to my friends in language school all the time. A kind of nervous litany of calendaring to soothe my soul.

The irony was that, by the time I left Germany thirteen months later, I felt happier and more at home there than I had ever felt anywhere. The time had flown by. I loved loved loved my German family and my best friend. I loved speaking another language every day, and I loved living in Europe. I look back on that time as one of the happiest of my life.

During my last few months in Germany, one of my friends from language school came to live near us and we went to the same school. Holly had seemed so well adjusted the summer before, but her year had been an unhappy one. She had never found a family where she had felt at home. Her German wasn’t great. And she couldn’t wait for the year to be over. So my friends and I included her in our activities — and things seemed to improve for her. In fact, a year later my best friend even went to live with Holly and her family in America as an exchange student.

One day Holly and I were talking, and she reminded me about how stressed I had been the summer before. She asked me if I remembered counting the days and months til the year was over to make myself feel better. I did, but it seemed a distant memory. Because the homesickness and stress of those first few weeks had completely faded into joy.

As I thought back, Holly and I were even able to laugh at some of the crazy things that had happened. My first German exchange “sister” had been so furious that I had been given her room while she had to share with her younger brother, that she had locked herself in the bathroom (and there was only one) for over 24 hours. Everyone tried to talk her out — while she ranted and raved about me.

I barely spoke German at the time, so I was piecing this all together from her actions and the fact that she was yelling my name while locked in a bathroom that we all wanted to use. I remember standing in the small kitchen of the apartment in which they lived trying to speak to her mother — who spoke very little English. I asked her what I could do. Perhaps I could go into to town and get her a little gift?

When I said this, her mother suddenly looked completely alarmed and almost ran out of the room. While I, equally alarmed, tried to explain myself. I fumbled for words to express that I just wanted to show her daughter that I liked her, that I was a nice person, that I was sorry I was in her room. This was just a way of showing her that.

At some point, the terror from the mother’s face faded — and with the help of my handy little German-English dictionary — we both suddenly realized what had happened. As it all turned out, the word gift in German means. . .poison.

This memory came flooding back this morning when I was thinking about the word presence. I have a big presentation tomorrow, and I have felt stressed. Last night, one of my co-presenters and I both even said that we were looking forward to Sunday — when this is over. Now the irony is that this presentation is for something we are both very excited about — and people are flying in from all over the country for it. The experience promises to be meaningful and deeply spiritual — and will move this process forward.

So why aren’t I feeling more joy about it? Because I am feeling stressed about what I have to do to prepare for tomorrow — the weight of my to do list instead of the joy of the invitation and experience.

That’s the thing about presence. When we’re in anxiety or stress, being right here right now doesn’t always feel like a solution. In fact, it can feel a little like my German mother felt about the word Gift. Alarming. Poisonous. When we’re anxious, we want whatever is making us anxious to be over, so we can look back and feel finished. Feel relief. We hope! From this place, presence feels more like poison than a gift.

But that’s where practice comes in. That’s where learning to be here now and doing it every day no matter what changes things. We begin to see that we are being tricked into not feeling grateful, not recognizing the joy.

When you learn how to ski and you start going up onto steeper slopes, one of the first things a ski instructor will tell you is not to lean into the slope. When you’re looking at a sheer vertical drop, your instinct is to get nearer to the ground. But when you do, those large slippery objects on your feet can actually slide out from under you more easily that if you stand up straight or even lean more downhill. It’s totally counterintuitive. And your mind refuses to believe it. So you have to practice. You have to talk to yourself and remind yourself of what is safe and what isn’t. And then do that over and over again until it’s second nature.

It’s the same with this practice of presence. Trying to get something over with to assuage your anxiety does exactly the opposite. It leaves squarely on the slippery slope of stress. Whereas being present in gratitude and joy for whatever arises puts you in the presence of gratitude and joy.

That’s what I’m learning. Every. Single. Day. It’s a work in progress for sure — and sometimes it doesn’t always feel like a gift. But it is. Presence is a present. One that we have to keep unwrapping every single day.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

23.1.20

A few years ago I began making memes using my photographs and combining them either with the words of others or with my own words. I’ve been revisiting these old memes lately. .. and this one popped up this morning. It feels like the perfect description of presence — and a great reminder for any of us who struggle with workaholism

For those of us who build our lives around our work, we can fall into the trap of thinking that a good day is one where we’ve ticked a lot off our to do list. I still feel that way. But lately I’ve been noticing that I can tick lots off my to do list and still not feel good about my day at all. In fact, instead of feeling a sense of relief , I often feel even more overwhelmed and exhausted. Why? Because a to do list is a little like quicksand. The more you step in, the deeper you sink. And the more you flail around the less likely you are ever to surface again.

That’s why I love this quote so much: The way to do is to be. I often find that the most productive, joy-filled, energized and fulfilling parts of my day are when I am not doing at all. But rather when I am being present to what is. Sometimes that means taking a walk and clearing my mind. Sometimes it means talking with a friend while walking. Sometimes it means feeding the dog or doing laundry or sorting the mail. Just being present to whatever arises. And being fully present to whatever that is. And without a doubt, the worst parts of my day are when I am worried about what I have to do but dreading doing it.

By the end of the day, the less present I’ve been, the less good I feel about my day. No matter how much I’ve ticked off my to do list.

Yesterday I walked twice, recycled all my accumulated junk mail, listened to the little voice in my head that told me I would feel better if I did a few things that I’d been putting off for weeks. And I still managed to get lots of work done for my clients. I went to bed feeling more at peace than I have in quite a while. Why> Because I shifted my focus from doing to being. And by that I mean, being present to whatever I needed to be present to at any given moment.

This practice of presence stuff may seem really amorphous, but it’s actually very simple. When we listen to our hearts, we are being. When we let our heads run the show, we are doing. When we listen to our hearts, we are present. When we listen to our heads, we are absent from our hearts.

The practice of presence is the practice of centering in our hearts and circling out from there. When we do, everything shifts. Because, as Lao Tzu knew. the best way to do is to be.

22.1.20

Yesterday, I received an email with this quote by Maya Angelou: “If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is to be present in the present. Gratefully.”

This photo was taken almost six years ago. This was my favorite mug at the time filled with herbal chai tea and frothy almond milk.

This was part of a series of photos about gratitude. In those days I lived in a townhouse I absolutely adored — but I was on the road often for over 200 nights a year. So when I returned home, I was flooded with gratitude for the little things that felt like home. I documented those things and wrote a little something about my gratitude.

These days, of course, I don’t have a home. That mug — one of the few household things I have kept — is in a box somewhere deep in my storage unit. These days I drink my tea from a travel mug, and I love that tea and that travel mug as much as I loved that beautiful handmade ceramic mug from Germany.

Yesterday I wrote about the chicken-and-egg question of Love and forgiveness. And then I got the email with Maya Angelou’s quote.

Do I look back on that old me with forgiveness? Do I look back on that time of my life with forgiveness? Yes and no.

And at night, when I sometimes struggle to sleep, do I remember to assuage the anxiety that arises about what is ahead with prayer? Usually, but often it takes surprisingly long to remember to pray.

And how am I doing at being present in the present? Gratefully? Better. Mostly better.

I have a feeling Angelou’s quote is going to become a kind of checklist for my practices of living Love. Perhaps it can become one for you, too:

• If I must look back, do so forgivingly.

This is a wonderful reminder that looking back isn’t always the best idea. . .If we go for a walk, do we walk looking backwards? Well, no, obviously. We know that we wouldn’t get far — and we’d bang into a lot of things. The same thing happens when we spend too much of our days looking backwards. We make precious little progress, and we bang into a lot of crap. But there are times, of course, when we do look backwards. Then it is wise to head Angelou’s word. Look back forgivingly — learning to release any judgment , anger, regrets and if onlys that arise. To do this is actually a practice of presence, because it helps us become less stuck in our past histories.

• If I must look forward, do so prayerfully.

Anxiety is a global human epidemic. We turn on the news and fearfully wonder — what’s going to happen next? To us, to our children, to this planet. We go through so much of our lives in planning mode — planning our next vacation or next big purchase or the next big event in our lives. We have jobs that require planning. We buy apps and calendars that allow us to be prepared for the future. These are actually called planners!! But most of this planning leaves out prayer. The prayer that reminds us that we are not alone in this endeavor called life. This job of being human. Prayer aligns us with our Source, with Love. That’s what prayer does. So if we must look forward, then we must remember to lean into Love and align with our Source of true supply.

• The wisest thing I can do is to be present in the present. Gratefully.

Right here, right now. Is everything okay? More often that not the answer is yes — but we’re too busy perusing our pasts or fretting about our futures to remember that we’re okay. So how do we shift out of that mesmeric past and future thinking? Gratitude. Right here, right now — what do I have to be grateful for? Make a list. Seriously. Make a list. Or take photos. Or speak out your gratitude.

Gratitude, I have found, is one of the greatest tools of the practice of presence, because it brings us back to our hearts, aligns us with Love, and reminds us that right here, right now, Love is. Love is present because Love is presence.

So when we practice presence, we are living Love. And Love loves us whole. I keep saying this, because we can’t hear it enough: Love will always love us whole. All we have to do is to keep practicing being present in the Love that will always be our Source. Gratefully.

21.1.20

Yesterday in a business meeting, my colleagues and I had a lengthy and powerful discussion about love and forgiveness. Toward the end of our meeting, it became a chicken or egg kind of conversation. One said that you cannot forgive without love. The other said that you cannot love until you forgive. I was noodling around on the computer and so I did’t contribute much to that part of conversation. But earlier I had shared a story that is in my upcoming book — a story that has become my model for forgiveness. It is the kind of forgiveness that defies human logic. And yet it is the kind of forgiveness that changes the course of human affairs. It has certainly clarified my ideas of forgiveness and Love.

Many years ago, an author who was writing my stepmother’s biography asked me how long it had taken me to forgive my stepmother. Apparently she had been told story after story about how badly my stepmother had treated me, and she was actually afraid that I wouldn’t want to talk to her about my “wicked stepmother” (as she had called herself) at all.

I was surprised by the question. “Forgive her?” I asked. I almost didn’t know what she was talking about. “Oh I forgave her shortly after she died. I mean was was the point in not forgiving her? She was dead, so I would be the only one who would stay mired in anger or hurt.”

Over time, I came to realize that the reason I have been able to forgive others is because I have almost always — even as a very little girl — been able to viscerally feel and therefore deeply understand — the fear that caused them to behave badly. But I have also come to understand that where my forgiveness practice is not so strong is as it relates to myself.

At the end of the day, for me at least, forgiveness of others is far easier than forgiveness of myself.

When I don’t sleep well, as I didn’t last night, it is almost always because I am beating myself up for something. Last night it was something work related. And when I start beating myself up for one thing, pretty soon the deluge of self-doubt snowballs into a blizzard self-condemnation. In the old days, all that could avalanche into full-on self-loathing, which could wipe me out for days.

These days, however, I return to my practice of presence. Which means that the first thing I do is return to Love. You see, I see Love as neither chicken or egg. Love is the Everything. Love made the chicken and made the egg. Love makes us and Love heals us. Love loves us and Love forgives us. Love loves through us to lead us to the forgiveness which returns us to Love.

All we have to do is practice returning to the Presence of Love.

Over and over and over and over again.

But that’s not always easy. And yet, it’s the only thing that works: Just loving. And loving some more. And loving again. Us, Others. The past. The present. The future. Our bank accounts. Our extra pounds. Our past mistakes. Our present failings. Our future fuck ups. Love it all. And then keep loving. And loving and loving and loving.

When we love, we are present in Love, to Love, as Love, with Love, through Love, for Love. And when we are present like this, Love does what Love does. Love loves us whole.

So that’s why the practice of presence is such a game changer. The practice of presence is the practice of the Presence of Love. When we practice presence, we are living Love. And that, as I’m slowing discovering over the course of this lifetime, is all that we are here to do.

20.1.20

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. Reverend King was one of the great heroes of my childhood. Watching him on television as a little girl gave me both a profound sense of hope as well as a deep sense of injustice.

Today we honor his legacy of nonviolence, of truth speaking, of coalition building. But we also acknowledge that deep systematic racism not only still exists, but that it is also woven into the very fabric of this country.

Perhaps the deep racial tensions that have scarred this country are not quite as visible as they were during the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movements, but they are still there. They are there for every person of color or immigrant who is stopped by a policeman or a border patrol officer. They are there for the family of the last president of the United States and a biracial actress who married into the British royal family. Racism is still racism even if there are not marches and riots that reflect its tension.

Because, as Dr. King understood, it is not the absence of tension that is the benchmark of true peace. Just because we don’t see riots or marches on television and policemen turning firehoses on people trying to eat at a diner does not mean that we are at peace. Until true justice exists, peace cannot truly exist.

Dr. King’s message is a profound truth. It is not the absence of something that determines the true state of anything. If we eat badly and do not exercise and live in a constant state of stress, but our yearly medical exam comes back without evidence of disease, does that mean we feel and are truly healthy? If we are not being pursued by the IRS for back taxes and we can pay the rent and the minimum amount on our credit cards each month, does that mean we are financially well off? It is not the absence of disease that determines true health. It is not the absence of bankruptcy that determines financial stability.

Many of us unconsciously determine our wellbeing by the absence of something horrible (disease, poverty, death, unemployment, divorce, bankruptcy) along with the presence of what is ultimately meaningless — our job description, our type of car, our wardrobe, our vacation plan, our marital status. Yet we forget to really examine whether what we all really need is truly present: peace of mind, community and connection, human kindness, hope, love, joy, meaning. fulfillment, balance, confidence, supply.

Yesterday I read a statistic. The world’s richest 26 people own as much as the poorest 50% of the planet. To describe this in the kind of language that Reverend King used, “True wealth is not merely the absence of poverty, it is the presence of equality.”

Martin Luther King constantly urged African-Americans and Civil Rights advocates to keep our eyes on the prize. The prize of true freedom, true equality, true peace.

What most of us don’t realize is that each time we accept less than true freedom, true equality, true peace — because we think we have to “take what we can get” — we become part of a system that settles for the wrong kind of prize. We have helped to create a system founded on a false idea of presence. Presence is not about making injustice invisible. Presence is not making materialism a false idol. Presence is not politicians or people in power who tell us what will make everything okay or not okay.

The only true presence comes from love and brings the peace that passes all understanding. The only true presence understands that there is no separation between me and you, between us and nature, between people and the planet, between the human and the divine.

But somehow we’ve lost all that. So how do we get it back? By practicing true presence every day in our own lives. But being present to one another in love. By seeking the presence of peace and love instead of the false comfort of “it’s not as bad as it could be”. By listening to our hearts instead of someone who claims to have all the answers.

Until we know what true presence feels like, we will never be able to manifest it in the world. This is the prize we all need to keep our eyes on: the Presence of Love. Every. Single. Day. Every. Single. Person. Every Single Circumstance.

No. Exceptions.

19.1.20

Many years ago, when I discovered that the words holy, whole, wholly, health, heal and healing all have the same root word — something inside me breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Before that, I thought that there were holy people and, well, the rest of us. What I learned was the word holy had nothing to do with being better or more spiritual. It meant whole, undivided, not separated from our Source or one another in our Source. Our Source, of course, being Love.

Yesterday I took a Sabbath day. What did that mean? After a few hours on the computer in the morning, I didn’t turn it on the rest of the day.. I put down my phone. I didn’t answer emails or look at texts. I used this unexpected day that had presented itself to be present.

To be real, it was a challenging day. I had not one but a number of disagreements and difficulties with someone near and dear to my heart. Each time I thought we’d hit the reset button, it happened again. I watched my response. I felt like a little girl. I wanted to run away. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

Instead I cleaned my room, did my laundry, put fresh sheets on my bed. And kept listening and being present to what I needed to learn.

What I learned was that I have not been living entirely in integrity with my spiritual beliefs and practices. What I also learned was that I don’t have “the answer” as to how to change that. But I do know that I have to change it. Being present to that truth became the present of my day.

I woke up this morning thinking about the idea of Sabbath. So I went back and read two papers I’d written in seminary about keeping the Sabbath holy by not working. By using it as a time to release from work and digital life. By connecting deeply with our Source and one another. In both of my papers, i witnessed my own resistance and excuse making.

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

The word Sabbath literally means a day set apart as holy. Ironically, we have become so disconnected from our own wholeness and holiness that we have to consciously set aside a day to feel what is always true.

Holy, wholly, whole. This litany of words went through my head as I looked through my photos to find today’s image for this blog. I took this picture in Wales last fall. I didn’t notice it at the time. I sure noticed it now. Especially as I played with the vibrant colors streaming through a hole where a window in a wall used to be.

Wholly holy whole.

We’re all trying to heal something. We’re all trying to feel more whole.

This photo makes me think of that Rumi quote: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

That’s never been my favorite Rumi quote, but today I felt it differently. Today I saw the wound like the light coming the windows of this ruined abbey. Sometimes the walls we build — our big full lives and constructed identities — become barriers to our connectedness with one another and our Source.. We put so much energy into becoming something that takes us further and further away from who we’ve always been. Sometimes we have to break down what we’ve built up in order to let the Light illuminate our wholeness.

Sometimes we have to tear down what no longer serves us in order to recognize that we already have and are everything we need. That we all already are whole, holy whole.

This is healing. Understanding that our holy wholeness can never be destroyed. We just have to be present enough to remember the Truth of Love and how it shines through every single one of us. No exceptions.

18.1.20

Today feels like this photograph (which I took a few years ago hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains). No words. No clear sign. No discernible path. Not even pretty green leaves and flowers. Just kinda beige and blank.

The busy day I had planned has changed — and so instead of waking up shot from a cannon to get ready to lead a workshop, I have emptiness ahead of me. And that has created emptiness in my mind. I have nothing to write. It’s like someone siphoned all my thoughts away. All the thousand things on my To Do List feel less urgent and there is just space.

You’d think that would feel glorious. But for those of us who are doers, it feels just plain weird. And so, of course, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

Thank goodness for Gerald May, whose words often come in to save my bacon. Here’s what he wrote in his book, The Wisdom of Wilderness. It’s called “The Presence of Slowing”:

This presence cannot be grasped nor contained;

We cannot hold it for our own…

We can only be aware;

Watching…

Be ready to welcome;

Open to let this Presence wash over us…

Lean into its sanctuary…

And let it go

And that is what I plan to practice today: The presence of slowing.

17.1.20

Yesterday Santa Fe had a snow day. Businesses closed early because the roads were covered with ice and then snow and then ice. Which I discovered for myself when I went for a long afternoon walk — and ended up on my butt more than once after hitting big ice patches.

Whenever I fall down — especially on outside adventures — I remember the words of my teenage snowboard instructor decades ago who, after I complained about falling so much, looked me in the eye and said, “Duuuuude. You have to get over the idea that falling is bad.”

Right then and there, I knew that my unexpected guru had given me a great gift. It’s a gift I’ve turned to over and over again.

So often something we loved when we were younger, like falling, becomes something we dislike or even fear as we get older. Yesterday, instead of being afraid of falling, each time my feet slid out from under me, I became more and more grateful for my afternoon adventure. And my gratitude — and watching where I put each boot down — made me more present. My walk was gorgeous. The paths were almost empty. The snow came down and covered everything in a beautiful white blanket. It was quiet and perfect.

Now to be sure, I had had a very different day planned. And that, too, became a source of newfound presence. I had errands to run. Those didn’t happen, as the businesses I planned to visit closed early. I thought I would have the house to myself to work. Instead we were all home on a snow day. And all of it was perfect. We lit a fire, worked and visited and played with the dogs. I took my wonderful walk. And it all turned out to be the perfect afternoon.

The thing about presence is that it makes you more aware. Of everything. As I was out in the front garden shoveling snow, I took this photo. And suddenly I began to smile.

That painting of the Buddha on an old rusted out hinged piece of metal belongs to me. Except that it has lived in my friends’ front garden for so long that I think of it as theirs. A few years ago, it stopped standing up. So they lay it down and told me that they’d get it standing again. But the never did. From time to time when I visit, I notice it and think, I wonder what it needs to get vertical again.

But yesterday, all of a sudden, the horizontal Buddha seemed perfect. Not only perfect — but like a validation.

You see, my meditation and contemplation practice often ends up with me sound asleep. In other words, I, like this Buddha, often feel most at peace during and after a rather horizontal prayer practice.

I used to feel badly about that, until I learned to let myself off the hook. Especially now that sleep feels more like an epic movie! In last night’s dreams, my large plane crashed near a rocky island in the Pacific — and we were rescued by a tribe that no one knew existed. They had to live underground because every time they went outside, they were attacked by a warring tribe who came in on birds from distant islands. I spent the rest of the night running for my life from marauding birds. Even after I woke up and went back to sleep again. But the people themselves were lovely. And when we weren’t escaping peril, I thought I might like to live there forever instead of going back “home”. Nonetheless, I woke up feeling like whatever I had on my plate would be a piece of cake compared to that !

So that why, to have my meditations lead me into a sweet quiet sleep is often a gift. And then to wake up feeling deeply connected and at peace feels. . .well. . .a lot like this picture looks. Serene. Quiet. Beautiful.

So once again, this decision to begin my year with a practice of presence brought many presents. Gratitude. Observation. The ability to go with the flow of changing plans and weather. And a great walk!

It’s turning out that right here and right now is an amazing place to be!

15.1.20

Lately my dreams have been complete movies. They have a beginning, middle and end. They have a plot. AND I know I am the one dreaming them. Which means that I usually wake up feeling my nights have been as busy as my incredibly busy days.

From before the sun rises to long after the sun sets, I am on the go. I have my usual full load of work, and now I am working with many new clients on their projects. My plate is gloriously and interestingly full — for which I am grateful.

But now, all night long, I am on the go as well. So I wake up in the morning feeling as though my day continued right on through the night.

That’s why, in the past few days, I’ve come to understand that even though my practice of presence is working, I still need to find a way to just plain STOP.

I still smile whenever I think of my friend Carly explaining an acronym she had created for a practice that would help people eat more mindfully. The acronym was S-T-O-P. And, she said, the S stood for Stop! I burst out laughing — and Carly looked a little offended. But in that moment, it became totally clear to me that we can’t stop doing anything until we just . . .STOP.

Last night I took a long hot bath and then I got into bed early and read and journaled my spiritual practice. And every single thing I read — and I wasn’t seeking any of this out — was about Presence. Literally everything. I almost burst out laughing. The Universe was sure trying to get my attention.

But here’s how it really got my attention: About half an hour into my journaling, I suddenly felt this great sense of calm and peace and joy wash over me. I was so happy to be reading what I was reading about Presence. The next thing I knew, I had dozed off. And when I woke up — instead of turning on my computer and getting a little more work done — I turned off the light and went to be early. And, even better, I actually fell right asleep and slept through the night.

Sure I had my movie dreams, but I didn’t wake up once. Which never happens. Another message loud and clear: The only way to Stop is to STOP!

And when I woke up this morning — pelted by the usual array of to do’s and fear and busyness — I felt a clarity of purpose and presence that I did not feel yesterday morning.

Presence, I am learning, is also a conscious invocation of absence. We have to create the space for presence through the absence of doing, watching, distracting, accomplishing, answering, researching, creating.

When we willingly invite absence, we may hear silence. But silence is not emptiness or nothingness. In fact, silence, I read last night, is a primal presence. That’s right, when we willingly create a quiet place in which to experience presence, the silence we seem to hear is actually a primal presence. And that Primal Presence is Love.

I believe that all the noise of our lives is generated by fear-based doing and thinking and problem-solving. By the desire to keep what we are afraid we will hear in the silent spaces of our lives away. But here’s the irony. What we don’t see is that it’s not “our minds” keeping us busy, but rather our habits of fear. Fear is afraid of the silence and so it keeps us in a cycle of fear-based communication. And why is fear afraid of the silence? Because in the silence is the primal Presence of Love that always casts out fear.

That’s why the practice of presence is such a game changer. When we practice presence, we remember the Power of Love. And then — even for a moment — we feel Love. And when we feel Love, everything shifts. Everything.

So this morning feels different because of what I experienced last night. I felt calm and peace and joy was over me. And that feeling reminded me that that is what I really want. Today isn’t about all the things on my to do list. It isn’t about working and errands and writing and accomplishing. Today I want to carry that presence of peace with me and consciously remember to invoke the silence in which it can surface. And to do that I have to do what I never allow myself to do. I have to stop. S is for Stop. S is for Silence. And silence equals presence. And presence equals peace.

What a lot I am learning about the things that matter the most simply through this dedication to the practice of presence!

16. 1. 20

It’s hard to see this photo, which is a shame. Because it’s such a sweet picture of my dad and me, standing on a hotel room balcony in Hawaii, looking out at a beautiful sunset.

Today is Thursday — which is what prompted this sharing. Throwback Thursday — I always love seeing people’s photographs from days gone by. Looking at this photo — I know that one of the reasons my dad loved visiting Hawaii is because it was one of the few places where he could relax.

You see, my dad worked all the time. You can’t have a 65-year career as an actor if you’re not willing to work and work and work. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of being present. He was. He was present when he was near the ocean. He was present when he was looking at art. He was present when he was making a beautiful meal. And he was present when he was with me.

I guess that’s why I picked this photo for today. Maybe it’s the chiaroscuro of age, but somehow this photo helped me remember that we are all born with the capacity to be present . . .and so all it takes is a little practice to remember what is innate in our souls. Presence is our essence. Practice just allows us to recalibrate and reconnect with who we truly are — and always will be. The presence and essence of Love.

My dad taught me what love feels like. And I spend a lot of my life living forward that legacy of Love. But I can’t do that without practice. In fact, none of us can. We all have to practice what we want to express and experience. We all have to practice the heart-centered qualities we want more of in our lives such as peace, joy, compassion, kindness, generosity, gratitude, open-heartedness. When we practice peace, we experience peace. When we practice joy, we express joy. When we practice love, we live Love.

This is the power of practice. So today, through the darkened lens of the past, I remember who taught me this and why I want to keep living Love forward.

13.1.20

You know how when you become aware of something — say a certain brand of car or a kind of flower — you suddenly see it everywhere? That’s what’s been happening with my practice of presence.

When I wake up in the morning and get quiet to hear what blog needs to come through me, sometimes I’m led to look for a quote. This morning the thought came, “What did you write about presence in The Way of Being Lost?”

So I used that handy little magnifying glass search tool, and found this. . .which is hilarious, because I had just said it not ten minutes earlier. You see, it is my daily morning prayer — and been since childhood. Before I’m even fully awake, I say this prayer to myself.

This is the day that Love has made

Be glad.

Give thanks.

Rejoice.

Stand in Love’s Presence unafraid.

In Love lift up your voice.

When I included this prayer in The Way of Being Lost, what amazed me was that joy had been a part of my prayer since childhood. I saw that had been telling myself to practice joy my whole life: Be glad. Rejoice! That affirmed the centrality and importance of joy — and reassured me that practicing joy wasn’t crazy, but rather what I’d always been trying to do!

Now I see that I’ve also been telling myself to be present to Love my whole life: Stand in Love’s Presence unafraid.

I’ve always focused on the word unafraid in that part of my daily morning prayer. Because every morning fear tries to pelt me with its daily agenda. So I remind myself that I can and must stand in Love’s Presence unafraid. And that then reminds me that unafraid is really the only thing we can be in Love’s Presence, because Love cast out all fears.

But I see now that, because I was so focused on being unafraid, I wasn’t really taking in the idea of Presence.

To practice presence is to practice being present to Love. In Love. As Love Through Love. With Love. When we practice presence, we live Love. We are loving. We see through the eyes of Love. We love one another. And then, of course, we ARE unafraid. Because Love only sees as in through Love. So all we feel and experience is that Love.

And what’s the last line of the prayer? In Love lift up our voice. Many of us are dismayed at the level of hateful rhetoric we hear being spewed. Many of us are even more dismayed at the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we get tricked into our own less-than-loving responses to that rhetoric.

So. . .here’s the beauty of standing in Love’s Presence unafraid. Then. . .and only then. . . we can lift up our voices in Love. And that — THAT — is how we heal the world!

12.1.20

As our whole planet is coming to understand, our seasons don’t look or feel much like most of us are used to. Today in the Northeast US, it will be almost 70 degrees in January. Australia is burning, and there are torrential floods in the Dubai. The Southeast US is experiencing the kinds of destructive tornadoes that usually happen in the spring. Puerto Rico is being devastated by the kinds of earthquakes usually found in California. And the fortunate rest of us who are not experiencing catastrophic climate issues don’t know whether to wear our t-shirts or our down coats.

In other words, we cannot plan our lives by the way things used to be — because clearly the world is changing.

Terrifying as this can feel, it is actually also hopeful. Because only by recognizing that we can no longer turn on the autopilots of our lives and follow the old familiar flight plans will be begin to make the changes that we have to make in order to make sure future generations have a future.

So how and where does this new way of living start? With each of us.

Living our lives using old familiar scripts based on our old stories based on even older memories simply perpetuates an old paradigm that we are all slowly coming to understand no longer works. Not only that, our old paradigm is what has gotten us to right where we are.

On a global scale — as on an individual level — we have to be willing to jettison the old and find a new way of being.

And it all begins with presence. Just as we can no longer automatically grab our winter coats or tell ourselves that tornadoes only happen in the spring, instead we have to check the weather every day. So, too, we have to check our thoughts and behaviors and patterns to make sure that they aren’t running the show. And then we have to learn to be present right here and right now.

Yesterday, for example, I realized yet another way that how I move through the world is based on a series of old stories I have strung together and called “me”.

Now, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve spent decades unpacking old stories and tossing them out — or at the very least recycling them. But it would seem that this process never ends. Because yesterday I realized just how my work life has reflected some very old stories about entrepreneurship, money, supply hard work — all of which I learned from my parents. Now my parents have been gone a very very long time. And the world in which they lived and worked is long gone too. Yet these old stories are reflected in my bank account, my stress level, my sleep patterns, my enjoyment of life, my frantic pace, and my belief in my own deservability. Still. Even after decades of spring cleaning.

When I was looking for the photo to accompany this blog, I stumbled across this photo of my dad and me. I don’t think I’ve ever posted it before. It was taken in Switzerland in the early seventies. Once again I was about to pass the photo over and choose something else, when I thought to myself, “Why don’t you ever choose that photo?”

A few common sense answers popped up: It’s not a terribly good photo. You’re both a little far away. The background isn’t terribly interesting. But though all that may be true, I’ve posted other pictures of similarly mediocre quality. So I quickly realized that wasn’t it.

So what was it? I realized it was this: I don’t have particularly good memories of that trip. Now the funny thing is that — many of the photos I post I have absolutely no memory of at all! None whatsoever. So I simply superimpose the generally loving and good memories I have of any time I got to spend with my dad on those photos. But this trip, well, what was different?

We went to Switzerland from London for the New Year. I took ski lessons. I didn’t particularly like them, nor did I dislike them. We stayed in a big old glamorous Swiss hotel. We took walks in the snow. I remember that a gondola got stuck in midair for hours and that that was the talk of the town. And I remember New Years Eve, when we attended the hotel festivities and my dad used his dubious German to very humorous effect. But what I remember most about that trip was the flight back to London. My mother and I were put through unusually rigorous security screening and then our flight was forced to land in Paris due to fog in London. And my father spontaneously decided to introduce me to Paris instead of having me fly home to start school. Since I was never allowed to miss school — and this was my first trip to the Louvre — it was memorable indeed.

So what was it about this trip to Switzerland that I don’t remember fondly? I love mountains and the snow and skiing. I love discovering new places and I loved being with my dad. I should have adored this trip.

Thinking back, I believe that my memories of this trip were colored by my parents’ experience of it. I don’t think my parents’ particularly enjoyed themselves on this trip. That was the definite feeling I got from them. So their experience not only colored my own of that holiday, but it has colored my enjoyment of the photos even now. It left me with a flat feeling about what was an extraordinary experience for a young girl to have — her first (and only) ski trip to the Swiss Alps!

So why does this matter? Let’s be real. It doesn’t. Not at all.

Except that it’s a very clear example of how an old story of an even older memory can live on inside of each of us in a very unconscious way. . .and then determine all of our actions.

Earlier this week, I was invited to participate in something that sounded amazing. My immediate response to the invitation was to be excited by the opportunity and the adventure. And yet I immediately thought to myself No. Those kinds of invitations aren’t for people like me. The reasons I gave for not participating were all very rational and sound: Money. Work. Responsibilities. And yet something kept calling to me. It took me a few days to realize that what was calling to me was a “me” I had not allowed to exist for a very long time. If ever. A me who did not take her cues about who she was from her responsibility to her family legacy and the story it told her about who she was supposed to be.

Because as much as I love my father and as grateful as I am for all I learned from my mother, I know that I haven’t always allowed the Real Me to come out and play. Now of course that Real Me will always reflect my father’s joy and love of life, my mother’s discipline and incredible creativity. But the Real Me also needs to reflect something larger than the imprinting of their stories — something larger than the imprinting of any human stories. And that Real Me can only emerge when I learn to listen to her speak.

So how does this circle back to my dire description of the state of our planet? We are all moving through our lives in a state of semi-shock about the state of the world. And yet what is the state of the world other than a reflection of the state of our thoughts? We place our faith in the systems we have been taught will support us if we support them, and yet in our heart of hearts we know those systems are broken. And in our heart of hearts we know that if we can’t learn to be present to exactly what is going on right now and begin to develop new ways of being by releasing old ways of thinking, nothing will change.

This is why the practice of presence is so critical. And it begins and ends with every moment we live and breathe.

As we go to sleep at night, do we love or fear or crave or resist that process based on our accumulated memories of sleep? As we wake up in the morning, do we love or fear or crave or resist what lies ahead based on our accumulated memories of our lives? Or can we begin to learn to lean into the presence of right her and right now and respond from our hearts?

Yes, we can. But only if our lives become a practice of presence. Only if we are willing to be more than our memories and greater than our pasts and deeper than our histories and stronger than our fears. Only if we are willing to trust that by being present right here and right now, we are being present to the only power that is true — and the only power that can change anything in this world. The Power of Love. Because you see, the only way to be right here and right now is to trust that there is nowhere any of us have been where Love has not been here before us.

To be present right here and right now is to be present to the Power of Love. Love that is bigger that familiar stories or old systems or the way things were or have been done. To live in our hearts and not our heads — and to connect to our past and future through the heart-centered threshold of now. This is how we change the world — one breath, one thought, one memory, one decision, one idea, and one hope at a time.

Me. You. We change the world through the presence of Love. We rewrite our old stories by living new lives. We create a new future by beginning to live it right now. We heal old wounds by leaning into Love. And we believe that all this is possible because we believe in the Power of Love.

Sound crazy? It’s not. It’s SO not! But the world would have you believe it is. The world would have you believe that pondering the problems of the past and fretting about the fallout of the future is a far more fruitful path. It’s not.

Right here, right now is the only place there is. And right here, right now we can all learn to lean into and be present with the Power of Love that can — it really can! — change each and every one of our lives. . .and so change our world!

10.1.20

This morning I went searching for a little inspiration for my practice of presence and I stumbled across this Zen saying. It pretty much said it all. Everything I’ve been thinking, writing, and praying about these past ten days.

We, the people, are wildly infallible. We take things too personally. We overreact and underperform. We sometimes show up just as we need to and then we fail to show up at all. We want to be better people, but the more we focus on our external identities, the less present we are to one another and our own hearts.

Many of the people I have loved most are not all still in my lives on a daily basis. Some are even no longer on this planet. But everyone I have deeply loved is present every day in my heart. Isn’t that the meaning of presence?

Isn’t what we want most from one another is presence? And what is presence? A quiet and reliable and constant Love.

We spend so much time trying to prop up our external identities for this identity-driven world. We spend so much time trying to be “someone”. But all that will really matter in the end is how present we have been.

So today I plan to contemplate this saying and try to live it: Be the presence. Not the person.

I’m guessing that what I’ll discover is that the more I am that presence of Love, the more I will become the person I have always longed to be.

And so may we all continue our practice of presence. . .of living Love.

11.1.20

One of my favorite poets, William Stafford, wrote this beautiful poem two days before he died. (As a practicing poet, he practiced writing poetry by writing a poem almost every single day.) Stafford’s poems have been profoundly important to my own practice of joy and presence and discovery and humility for years now.

This is an incredible meditation on presence, on being here now, on how we live our lives, and what we want our legacies to be.

So today’s practice of present for me is being present with this incredible poem by William Stafford.

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around.

9.1.20

The other day my best friend and I were trying to find her the best iPhone case. We were both scrolling through various options, when suddenly she burst out laughing and said, “Yup. We’ve gone down the review rabbit hole.”

I’d never thought of it that way until she used those words. But she’s so right. This is how we online shoppers determine what to get in the oversaturated market of stuff to buy. We read reviews and more reviews and more reviews — and then, at least if you’re like my best friend and me — you eventually go down the review rabbit hole. Why? Because you’re trying to find the perfect item, the best item, the most bang for your buck. . . and before you know it, days have gone by trying to spend the least to get the most that will last the longest.

Why is this problematic? Because there is no best. Best is relative. A few years ago when trying to find the “best” camera, someone said something so wise to me:”There is no best. There is only the best for you. And that’s relative. And, at the end of the day, it comes down to this: The best camera is the camera you enjoy using.”

Isn’t this true of everything? And yet somehow, so many of us have have this magic pill idea of living. That there is a best something out there and one day we will achieve it, own it, experience it.

That’s why the daily practice of joy has been such a game changer for me. The days I remember, the experiences I remember and the ones that have brought me joy.

And that’s also why I’m trying to consciously engage in this practice of presence. Because the days that I remember most — and the days that bring me the most joy — are the days when I am the most present. Which is NOT when I am going down the review rabbit hole.

Down the review rabbit hole, I am saying I am unhappy with my now and am imagining a better future with new shoes or a new car or even a better phone case. Whaaaat?

And yet we all do it — and we call it common sense. After all, it’s useful to read whether someone’s shoes pinched or phone case was shoddily made. And I actually really like that community continues to exist in the virtual world. We still need one another.

So what’s the issue? For me it’s that I still have this idea that there is some future me that will be happier than the current me — and that future me needs to have the right stuff to be happier.

And that’s where practicing presence comes in — by checking in with myself on my motives. Do I really need this? Why does it matter so much to me? Who do I think I will be if I have this? And why is the person I am now with the stuff I have now not enough?

And then, usually, coming back to gratitude for right where I am. who I am, how I am — right here right now. In other words, giving myself a five-star review for just showing up in Love.

Maybe that’s what we all need to do a bit more. Practice being present and grateful for the ways in which each of us is trying our best to show up to our world in Love. And then keep doing it. Keep showing up in Love.

8.1.20

It’s the eighth day of my commitment to be present — and then to blog about being present.

And so today, I am present to the fact that I have nothing to blog about.

Instead of blogging, I am praying for our planet.

Prayers for our planet is today’s practice of presence.

7.1.20

My dad is the person I have loved the most. As a little girl, he taught me the meaning of Love by loving me. I carry forward his legacy of Love because long after his death, he saved my life by helping me remember that life is all about Love. He helped me create my daily practice of joy because my memories of him reminded me that joy is my love language.

It’s because of my dad that I write, that I post on social media, that I travel the world speaking, that I lead inspirational tours, that I make appearances at conventions and festivals. I know that the reason people want to meet me is because they get to experience a little bit of the huge bright beautiful presence that was my dad through me.

But I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that sometimes, just sometimes, this focus on this famous person in my life brings up issues for me.

This morning when I went to post something on social media, I noticed that the inspirational meme I made had had very little response. And last week, when I posted the top nine photos from 2019, all but two of them featured my dad. It’s a fact. When I post about my dad, people pay attention. Everything else is a crap shoot.

So as I thought about today’s blog post, I thought — well, I guess I better post something with my dad in it so I get those likes and views.

And then I felt a bit disappointed in myself. There you go, I thought, playing the fame game. . . Is that really practicing presence?

On Sunday night, the Golden Globes were on television. I actively loathe awards shows. I always wonder why there is an entire “season” during which famous people put on clothes, jewelry and shoes that cost triple the annual income of a whole family in a developing nation, receive bags of free gifts whose cost could buy groceries for a household for months, and then stand around congratulating one another for doing their jobs and decided who has done the best at doing their jobs. There are teachers and firefighters and social workers and rehab counselors out there doing much more important work, and we have no idea who they are. But for over a month, we focus on what someone wore or said or did at an awards show for movies and television.

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a good movie or television show from time to time. (I rarely watch television, but when I find a show I like, I truly love it.) And I love going to the movies occasionally. And certainly I understand that — no matter how wonderful my dad was, had he not been famous he would not have been able to do nearly the good work he was able to do in the arts in this country. And I know that I would not have the joy of sharing his legacy of Love with others the way I do if Vincent Price had not been a famous actor.

But still, this mania for fame has long been problematic for me. From the time I was a little girl, I couldn’t understand why the people who seemed to be doing the things that mattered (saving animals, marching for civil rights, teaching us kids) got less attention than the famous people I knew. This discomfort is actually why I did my doctoral work on celebrity. I needed to understand what made it tick. (I finally did — but that’s another blog.)

So the other night, when Ricky Gervais brilliantly but scathingly took the piss in his opening speech — which I happened to see because I’m staying with friends who love awards shows and they had it on the telly — I actually loved it! Here was a famous man being paid to stand up and be viewed by millions as the host of an awards show, skewering his own job, his own lifestyle, the actual event paying him, the wealthy and famous people surrounding him, and ultimately the institution of fame that gave him this platform in the first place. And the irony deepened — because although Ricky Gervais called out his fellow celebrities on using awards shows as their platforms to speak about about global issues — the only part of the awards shows I do appreciate are the powerful speeches about the things that really matter!

Looking out at the audience and reading celebrity social media posts after the fact, some people loved it—but a lot of people seemed angry or uncomfortable. But don’t we all feel angry or uncomfortable when we catch a glimpse of the things in our lives that our disingenuous? For example, people who meet me once tell me how nice I am. And really, I am pretty nice. Except get me on the phone with a customer service person who can’t deviate from their script, and nice goes out the window! And when it does, I often think to myself, “Good thing those people that think I’m so nice can’t hear me now!”

But then I think, “There is an alternative to this. You could actually try to be a bit nicer to these customer service people.” And then I do. . .and I feel a lot better about myself.

And the other night, each time I came in to watch a little of the awards show, my best friend jabbed me with humor, “But I thought you actively loathe awards shows!” LOL

So why am I sharing all this? Because I know when I post this sweet photo composite of my dad and me (made by a wonderful fan (@satans_horror_comedy) on Facebook and Instagram it will get triple the likes that yesterday’s meme got. And yesterday’s meme said something I know we all need to remember. So sometimes I think to myself, I wish that meme got as much attention and my dad did.

And yet, I LOVE posting about my dad — because when I do, I viscerally remember the love that he taught me — and I am grateful beyond measure that I get to share that love with others so they can feel it too.

And we all have areas like this in our lives, don’t we? Places where we feel conflicted in some way. Places where we wonder if we are letting our egos run riot or are being ungrateful for the gifts we’ve been given, or are living legacies that are a mixed bag? And yet, if we are not present to our lives, if we can’t look at these things about ourselves and our histories with a clear eye and not a little bit of humor (a la Ricky Gervais), then we will never be fully present to all the various facets of our own existences!

And when we can’t be present in this way, we begin to stop listening to our own hearts, to one another, and to the world. And that’s what gets us — as a people living on a precariously teetering planet — to right where we are right now. In a world that is in a very scary and dangerous place.

So presence, I am discovering as I practice it this year, isn’t all about navel gazing and centering in silence and smelling the roses. It’s also about being present to the realities of our lives in honesty, humility gratitude, confusion, joy, and the spirit of discovery.

Which brings me back to my dad. The best thing about having a famous dad is that he is still getting people to listen and feel the things that matter the most — Love, joy, connection, hope, change, compassion, humility. . .and did I mention Love?

So thank you dad — and thank you to all of you who love my dad. Thank you for being present and living forward this legacy of Love!

6.1.20

When I can’t sleep, my head is usually going a million miles an hour — and if something is niggling me, then it’s circling around some supposed problem like a berserk bee trying in vain to pollinate a crazy flower.

That’s what happened last night. And it’s amazing how long it took me to remember that I have a practice for this. Hours went by as I frantically circled my problems before I remembered to invoke my centering practice of breathing in Love.

Basically, I breathe in Love and I breathe out fear until I feel myself calm down and center into Love.

When I first started this practice, it could take a long time to feel the Love. But the more I have practiced, the easier it becomes to re-center in Love.

Last night, it only took about two breaths for this thought to calm me down: “You can’t sleep because you’re afraid. You’re afraid because you made a fear-based choice. What you are feeling is the consequence of that fear-based choice. Nothing more. Nothing less. But remember what you know: Fear is a habit — a habit that is broken when we wake up to the power of Love. So keep breathing in Love and breathing out fear. And tomorrow, don’t try to fix the problem. Try to live forward in Love.”

And with that, I was able to sleep again. It wasn’t my best night sleep for sure. Fear kept trying to natter on at me. But at least now I knew what was happening.

AND I knew what to do when I woke up. Whenever I felt fear or shame or sorrow or doubt or anxiety, I would breathe in Love and breathe out fear. And then be present only to Love.

And frankly, what better way to start the first full work week of a new decade! A week when the news cycle is ramping up fears of war and fires are burning a continent. Breathe in Love and breathe out fear. Remember that fear is a habit — and all habits can be broken. And then focus on living Love. Every minute of every day — be present only to Love.

Sometimes a bad night is a great gift when we let it remind us of what is really true. And whatever the news and our monkey minds may tell us, only Love is true!

5.1.20

For almost two decades, one of my daily go-to practices has been walking. I’ve found walking to be a very accurate litmus test for how present I am — because there are walks when I finish feeling like I’ve spent them in a complete blur. Why? Because I’m thinking about so many other things that I am barely “there”.

The worst is when I start to use my phone — let’s say to take a photo or listen to a song or podcast or audiobook — and then get sucked down the rabbit hole of an email or social media or the news. And then, before I know it, I’m researching the best no-show socks or checking out a new backpack I don’t need from a kickstarter company.

One time this happened while I was on a walk and I literally walked right into the back of a parked SUV! It was ridiculous — and I was mortified. Walking is supposed to be my truest daily practice of presence and joy and I was so un-present that I slammed into the back of a car.

This is why I love my First Saturday EverWalks so much. On these group walks that I (nominally) “lead” all over the world on the first Saturday of each month — what really ends up happening is that no one leads because we all walk together. On these group adventures, I have such amazing, surprising, interesting, connective, and connecting conversations with the most wonderful, interesting, surprising people as I walk.

For years now, my best friend and I have had regular walk and talks when we are in the same place. I also often call my closest friends and talk to them while I am walking. The history of walking is replete with places and people who connected deeply and profoundly while walking. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of walking with friends along the famous Philosopher’s Walk in Heidelberg, Germany, while we all weighed in on the meaning of life. This past summer I had a series of beautifully profound conversations while walking from Philadelphia to DC with a group of people who had been strangers to me a day before and became fast friends by the end of our walk together.

I have no idea why walking together forges such a profound opportunity for connection and presence and discovery and listening and practice, but it sure does! So, if you’re ever in need of a booster shot for your own practice of presence, may I recommend forgoing that coffee date and going for a walk with a friend — or even someone you are just getting to know.

There’s a well-known African proverb that says, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.” Walk together — and I promise you will discover what this really means. The combustion engine has certainly made progress possible on previously unimaginable levels, but it has also allowed us to disconnect from our planet and one another. We need to walk together in order to be present to one another and our world.

That is what i remembered yesterday on my First Saturday EverWalk with a group of “strangers” in Wash Park in Denver — and it’s what I remember every time I walk with friends.

Walking together is such a gift — and all lit requires are four feet and an open mind.

For more info about the national walking initiative for which I lead walks, check out the EverWalk Website or the wonderful EverWalk Facebook Group Page.

4.1.20

Most of us love the lights of the holiday season. Driving through darkened neighborhoods on the longest nights of the year, we find joy in the beautiful lights outlining and illuminating houses. All over the world, there are special places — like the Botanic Gardens in Denver pictured in this photo — that celebrate the holidays with lights. People come from all over to walk through the cold and dark to ooh and aah over the beauty of lights.

As I was walking through the beautiful Botanic Gardens the other night, I found myself “operating” on two levels. The matter of fact: “That’s an beautiful way to outline a tree.” “That’s a unique combination of colors.” “That’s an amazing display of technology.” “I wonder why they have music here and not in other parts of the garden.” “That’s an artful way to combine shapes.” AND “Oooooooh.” “Aaaaaaaaaah.” Wow Wow Wow!”

The somewhat disappointing part to me was that the head-based observer was far more active than the heart-based experiencer. Even as I was walking through the gardens, grateful to be there, enjoying the fellowship of other walkers, appreciating the beauty of the lights, my head was in charge. And my head is not nearly the conduit for joy and presence that my heart is.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed myself. But the moments I enjoyed the most were the moments when my head took a back seat to the pure and simple delight in being alive that we feel in our hearts.

That gave me a big clue about presence. The practice of presence HAS TO BE a heart-centered practice. Because we ALL need help getting out of that stinkin’ thinkin’ that dominates so much of our lives. We all need to practice living more in our hearts.

The funny thing is that this photo makes me feel that heart-centered aaaaaaaaaah that I so long to feel more of. . .and that tells me something too. It’s become easier for a lot of us to feel our hearts virtually — through our reactions to things we experience on screens than that we experience in reality.

That is why this practice of presence is so key. We all need to practice being present in our hearts and to one another and our surroundings IN THE MOMENT!

And so THAT is what I intend to practice more of today and everyday. To live in the light — instead of in observation of the light. To live in love — instead of thinking about love. To be fully present in my heart right here, right now.

3.1.20

Why do so many of us feel the Immense promise of a new year as December draws to a close? Studies show that 60% of us make New Years Resolutions! We all long to be the people who we know we truly are. So we make resolutions each year. Most of us make the same ones: dieting or eating healthier, exercising, losing weight, saving more and spending less, quitting smoking, reading more, drinking less, and finding a new job.

And yet, just a few days into the New Year, most of us end up losing that glorious possibility of promise — and find it replaced by the burden of pressure. Pressure to change, to be better, not to fail. Suddenly eating healthier or quitting smoking doesn’t feel promising at all. It just feels like pressure.

This is why only 8% of New Years resolutions actually end up coming to fruition. Wow! So, what’s up with this?

New Years resolutions start from the mindset that something is wrong and we need to fix it. We’re unhealthy, overweight, unhappy, spendthrift. We have a problem — and we’re gonna fix it! Guess what? That never works. Why? Because the moment we start trying to fix a problem, we doom ourselves to living in a problem-based mentality. And that’s why we feel pressure. We’ve got a problem and we’ve gotta fix it!

That never works.

The only thing that does “work” is practice. But not practice in the sense of hitting a tennis ball over and over again. No! Practice living as if you are already the person you are longing to become. Sound crazy? I thought so too! But it actually works.

When we practice joy, we feel joy. When we practice gratitude, we feel grateful. When we practice compassion, we feel compassionate.

The last two months of 2019, I felt fractured, stressed, disconnected, overworked. And all I kept saying was that I wanted to feel more present. But how was that going to happen if I kept working more, stressing more, not stopping to breathe — and then saying that I didn’t feel present.

The only way I am going to feel more present is by being more present. Guess what? THIS is the practice of presence.

So how do we stop this cycle of going from problem to promise to pressure to problem. We practice living as if — as if we are already the grateful, calm, compassionate, joy-filled people we long to be. By practicing being who we long to be, we become those people. How?

Well, if I want to be more present, I can either talk about what I’m going to do to be more present, or I can simply practice being more present.

When I do practice presence, I am more present. For those twenty or ten or five minutes, I feel grounded and centered and calm. I know I am right here, right now. The same is true of joy or calm or centering or connection. Instead of talking about doing something, we embody it and experience it.

Think I’m nuts? Try it. Instead of focusing on what you want to change in your life (I want to eat or spend less, have a better job, be in a relationship) try making a list of the qualities you wish you experienced more fully (calm, joy, trust, peace, love, presence). Then try practicing peace or joy or trust or love. How? By listening to what brings you peace or makes you feel joy or helps you experience trust. And then commit to doing that for 20 minutes a day. Commit to living as if you already are the person you have longed to become!

We can all stop the cycle of problem to promise to pressure to problem by practicing living as if.

Today I am practicing presence even as I am writing this blog. I am present right here right now instead of worrying about my to do list or whether I should be journaling or meditating instead. Is it easy? No. But trust me, it’s a whole lot better than the stress-filled alternative. And already — three days into the new year, I feel more present. Not only that, I know what I need to keep doing. I need to keep practicing presence.

This stuff really works — which is why I’ve written a whole book about it. It’s called Living Love: 12 Heart-Centered Practices to Transform Your Life. (It’s coming out this April!)

I wrote the book because practice has changed my life. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have to remind myself to keep practicing every day. To stop complaining about a problem and practice living as if instead. But the good news is that I know this works. And not just for me, but for us us.

Not convinced? Well, what the harm in trying. I'm pretty darn sure, to use the words of one of my favorite TV commercials of my youth, that when you try it, you’ll like it. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’ll love it.

So give it a try! Practice living as if. And stop this cycle of problem to promise to pressure — and instead discover the panacea of living as if!

2.1.20

I am not a selfie taker, but I do participate in social media as a means of outreach.

Now, let’s be real. Social media a two-edged sword. Because even when I am doing something wonderful — such as visiting the Denver Art Museum (DAM) the other day and enjoying a wonderful exhibition about light — I am often trying to “capture” the moment so I can share it on social media. Which means, of course, that I am not fully present.

I took a break from social media over the holidays. I didn’t post anything except for my work for other clients — not even Instagram photos (which I usually enjoy posting). But the truth is — I enjoyed not posting, not thinking about posting, not looking for anything to post — way way way way more than I enjoy posting. And yet I never once considered giving up social media. Because if I don’t post, then I can’t share ideas like this, wonderful moments in wonderful places, and I certainly can’t connect with people (like you, who might possibly be reading this).

So what I did look at was how to change my relationship to social media. And the good news is that a lot of ideas surfaced. Ideas that I hope both to put into practice and to share with you.

Clearly I am not alone in this dilemma. We all live in a world where recording our lives has become at least as interesting and important (if not, in many cases, more) than actually living them. So, how do we stay present in this social media morass in which we all find ourselves living — especially if sharing our messages demands using social media?

As I have written in both books, there are four components to practice in order for practice to be effective: It needs to be daily, deliberate, conscious and committed. We know this is true when it comes to playing a sport or a musical instrument. But it is also true with something like the practice of joy or presence.

In my new book, there’s a whole chapter about the practice of presence. And in it, I wrote: “In order to practice presence, we have to practice presence. We need to be present right here, right now.” Duh! And yet, it is surprisingly difficult to actually do!

So, as I commit to making my own practice of presence paramount in 2020, I am looking to my own words for inspiration and answers. And this is what I have come up with: Even when I am looking for something to post on social media, I need to be present. Which means that I need to be aware of what I am doing. What I am choosing to do. And how I am doing it. I have to witness my own thoughts and actions.

So if taking that selfie or posting that image feels like it takes me away from being fully present right where I am, then I need to consciously and deliberately choose presence.

This means being aware of the choices I make, how I make them, and, when I fail at being fully present, then consciously returning to being right where I am.

I tried this the other day at the museum, and it felt really good. Really promising. I chose to capture a photo, and then I chose not to share it. I chose to recognize that I want to take a picture of a piece of art or installation, but then I chose to use that as an excuse to look more deeply. And when I looked more deeply, I was more present.

It’s progress, of course, not perfection. But it felt good to be more conscious — and therefore more present. And to have an absolutely wonderful afternoon surrounded by incredible art and feeling the joy that being in a museum always brings.

Presence, I am coming to realize, is the greatest present any of us can give — to ourselves and to others.

1.1.20

Today is the start of a new year and a new decade. A blank page yes, but in a book already replete with a great many thoughts. We feel the promise of a new year. A new decade. And yet it arrives with the ideas we bring about ourselves, the world, and our lives. Our hopes and our histories come with us. So, how do we make good on this new promise by not dragging ourselves down with our pasts?

I love the idea of intention. An intention is different than a resolution. An intention implies promise. An intention starts from the good instead of the should. An intention engages us in practice instead of problem solving.

This year I have a new book coming out. It’s all about this — and yet how often do I not practice what I “preach”? Far far too often. So, for this year, returning to this blog that has sustained me for so long, I am going to practice presence. Not ruminating on the past for fussing about the future. But being present right here, right now. In, as, through Love.

On this page, I will practice presence by posting one photo or meme a day that reconnects me both with joy and the practice of Love. My greatest joy is inspiring others to live more joy-filled lives. But if we are not practicing joy and presence and gratitude and Love ourselves, then how can we inspire others?

So today and everyday, I will return to these simple expressions of practice and share the process and the presence with others.

Wishing you all joy in your practices in 2020.