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This is the perfect time to move within and create a new consciousness of compassion, faith and unconditional love.
You can use this affirmation yourself. Remember that thought plus feeling equals power, so when you are thinking these words, or speaking them to yourself, recall what it feels like to experience compassion for something, and feel that. Recall what faith feels like, and feel that. Recall a time in your life when you have experienced unconditional love for someone, and feel that.

And so ends another month.  As we move closer to the end of 2020, I sense a new hope, a new light, coming into the consciousness of the human race.  I see evidence of this everywhere: some people are putting up their Christmas decorations early; others are speaking positively about the future.  Kindness is returning, compassion is being renewed.  There is a thing called consciousness, and it refers to our entire being:  our beliefs, values, attitudes, which lead to our words and actions.  The thing about consciousness is that it is much bigger than you or I.  Because we are all connected, there is a group consciousness.  A human race consciousness.  And everything begins within.  As within, so without.  What we think about expands.  All action is born in thought.  And this is true on an individual level as well as on a group level.  This past year, I’ve gone into hiding.  The consciousness I saw emerged, I will confess, frightened me in ways I never thought I could fear again.  I became greatly disillusioned with my fellow human beings.  My trust in the basic goodness of humanity was damaged.  Yes, I lost faith and I lost hope.  And I know that others felt the same.  In this way we succumbed to the group consciousness.  But with this new hope and this new light, together we can renew our faith, enlarge our hope, and move once again into knowing that love is stronger than hatred.  Some of you have joined me in November for an annual spiritual practice of deepened gratitude, listing 10 different things each day for which we are grateful. I have heard from some of you, who have reported that it was difficult to come up with 300 things for which to be grateful.  Some of you have reported difficulty in being grateful for the things that truly matter, those inner things like faith and compassion and trust and hope.  I too experienced this difficulty.  I’ve never experienced this kind of difficulty with my gratitude practice, and I’ve been doing this annual practice for decades.  Part of it is the natural process of grief that comes with loss.  The truth is there has been much loss for me in the last seven years.  But most of my own difficulty with the practice came from my own loss of trust in my fellow humans to do the loving compassionate thing. I’ve persevered. I’ve persisted.  I know enough to know that consistency and persistence in spiritual practice always pays off.  It is like one of my old meditation teachers told me once:  we sit, no matter what.  So I persisted, no matter what.  And slowly, surely, my own consciousness is once again morphing back into something I can live with.  And greater.  Because now I’ve seen things.  I’ve witnessed with horror what my fellow humans are capable of.  So my new consciousness, my new faith and trust and hope and love and compassion that is emerging is greater than ever.  I’m still cautious.  Maybe I’m not only grieving the loss of my husband and all the other physical losses, but also the loss of a certain sort of innocence.  What I know is that the new consciousness that is being born in me will result in a new person.  A wiser one.  A more peaceful one.  A more compassionate one.  And because we are all connected, I know that this new consciousness is also being born in you, and in our neighbors.  For Christians, this is the beginning of Advent, a time of joyous expectation.  In the New Thought world, this is, or can be, also a time of joyous expectation.  A time to expect a return to compassion, because we are compassionate ourselves.  A time to return to trust because we ourselves are trustworthy.  A time to return to unconditional love, because we love ourselves that way.  A time to once again simply know that all is well and all will continue to be well.  Because of the group consciousness, if enough of us do this thing, this changing of our own consciousness, together we will change the consciousness of the human race. So this December, my spiritual practice will move from a daily gratitude list to daily affirmation of love, trust, hope, faith, compassion and joy.  Won’t you join me?
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November closed out with 10 weddings, two of which included photography.  One wedding cancelled due the bride getting COVID.  December brings with it 7 weddings, 3 of which include photography, and a return to more ministerial work:  I will be giving one talk in December, and opening negotiations for my next Interim Ministry assignment, to begin sometime in early 2021.  The end of a sabbatical for me.  You can expect podcasts to resume as well.

This image is part of a series. Periodically, in my neighborhood, shepherds drive the sheep through. The sheep graze the surrounding hillsides and keep the brush down, it is good for fire prevention. I was moved to grab a camera and follow the sheep for a couple of hours as they passed through my neighborhood. Taking these photos was the first time in months that I had the urge to grab a camera and just shoot for the sheer love of it.

Well! It has certainly been a journey! Since I last posted my husband made his transition. Since then I’ve been doing that thing called grieving. Grieving is an interesting thing. It must be done. Actually I think a better way of putting it is that it must be allowed. If one doesn’t fully allow the grieving process, icky things happen. I am a firm believer in living a life of joy rather that a life of ICK, so I took a deep dive into the grieving process.

I let myself cry, willy nilly. Except when I had to go to work. Then I had to shelve those tears for a while.

I let myself nap, almost every day.

I let myself isolate.

And all the while I was allowing these things, I was doing some things too.

Moving my husband’s stuff from the house to the garage to the travel trailer. Somehow, when he first went, it seemed important to me to get his stuff out of the house. Sort of a cleansing ritual I guess. Then I had to move the stuff out of the garage to make room to organize things in there, and to make room for the sale of his boot shop. Yes, my husband had a boot shop. He was quite talented and made beautiful boots.

This is Clint and his significant other. They are from Oklahoma. Clint heard through the boot maker’s grapevine that my husband’s shop was up for sale and he jumped on the opportunity to grab hold of it. They traveled all the way to Nevada from Oklahoma to pick up the equipment, experiencing some adventures along the way. And we loaded the equipment in the midst of a snow storm.

Along with mountains of paperwork, and moving and selling and donating my husband’s stuff, there was stuff going in my life as well. While Floyd was still in home hospice, and on a day when a nurse was here as well as someone delivering the hospital bed, as well as me trying to clean up the latest mess in Floyd’s bathroom, I get a call from my publisher. I did not take the call that day. But in a process that had begun way before Floyd entered hospice, they had called to tell me my book was ready for review, the last step before publication. In addition, I had begun doing a podcast. Plus my little wedding business wasn’t so little. I specialize in elopements. And because of COVID forcing cancellation of a zillion big weddings, all of a sudden my phone is ringing off the hook with couples wanting to elope. They just wanted to get married. In October I officiated 21 weddings. That’s a lot of weddings for a grieving widow. In addition, retirement choices were presented. I had already retired from my photography business but now I was faced with additional choices. I’m still deciding about some of those but the short story is that I’m letting go a quite a few things to leave room for quiet time and ministry.

In recovery there is a saying: “don’t make any major decisions in your first year of recovery.” I’ve taken that and adopted it to: “don’t make any major decisions in your first year of widowhood.” So many of my choices are up in the air but I’ve noticed a few things.

In the stillness I’ve deepened my love affair with myself. And become more willing than ever to honor decisions based on my values. Thanksgiving is coming up. And COVID is still with us. And the Nevada governor has asked us to voluntarily stay home and not do social gatherings. I am honoring that. Even though Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, because it coincides with my recovery birthday. This year, the day after Thanksgiving, I will celebrate 34 years of good, solid, happy joyous and free recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction. I’ll be sharing my birthday, via Zoom, at a 12 step meeting that morning. That will be the extent of my socializing for both thanksgiving and my recovery birthday. Quite a change from previous years but I’m welcoming it. I plan to cook a turkey, just like I always do. It will just be a smaller one, with fewer fixings. I plan to, as is my tradition, get my Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving, along with making turkey soup and eating turkey sandwiches.

Soon I will resume podcasting my Fearlessly Feral podcast. I’m almost there, I can feel it. Soon I will take on another Interim Ministry assignment. I’m excited about that. Soon I may even start another book. In the meantime I’m just going to sit back and enjoy another stretch of quiet time.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Oh, if you wish to purchase my latest book, it is currently available in print version only (e-version coming soon) from:

My store here on my web site, or from Amazon, or from Balboa Press.