on the 1st day....

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
- Carl W. Buechner

on the 1st day of christmas, my true love gave to me.... the opportunity to listen and the gift of feeling heard.

i have been absolutely blessed by this blogging thing as far as i am concerned. it has become routine, and a way for me to learn (online and in a laboratory environment) how to communicate, to express ideas, to share parts of myself that i normally have kept bottled up inside. it is helping me to really look at who and how i am, and to try to learn how to accept that. it has offered me an outlet for some of my weirdness, and it has normalized that same weirdness in letting me see that i am hardly the "most" or "worst" anything.

i now communicate regularly with some very fascinating people in many parts of our little globe, and that has become my grist for the mill. it is my breakfast of champions.

let me take this day of my own personal gratitude and encourage you to visit the warriors on my blogroll. many of them have been nothing less than a gift from heaven to me. they inspire me with their blueprints of ideas, and they comfort me with their gentle offerings of support and criticism. they definitely make me smile from my heart. i have no doubt that most are angels (perhaps some light and perhaps some dark) sent in my direction to reassure me that i am on a right path.

today's sound choice is pat monahan singing "calling all angels"

inevitable

photo credit gladys

“The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.” Lord Byron

whatever happened to "there's nothing to forgive because there is no such thing as sin?"

each day i blog, i believe i am working on transgression. for me, this daily journaling and writing hopefully brings me closer to forgiveness and closer to being connected with the world around me in a new way.

i journal, i blog, i write, partly because i seek absolution. i know on a very real level, this is completely a moot point. this would be easily confirmed by the lessons i learn in a course in miracles. yet it is important that i work diligently in this direction. the more clearly i see and share my truth, the more my heart opens. this is at once challenging and very rewarding. my heart is opening, my world expands, and all the while my vision of the world grows along with this.

from wikipedia:
The atonement is a doctrine found within both Christianity and Judaism. It describes how sin can be forgiven by God. In Judaism, Atonement is said to be the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. This was originally accomplished through rituals performed by a High Priest on the holiest day of the Jewish year: Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). In Christian theology the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the death by crucifixion of Jesus Christ which made possible the reconciliation between God and creation.

Atonement is Inevitable

Free will does not mean
We can remain forever separated
From our Creator.

We can indeed
Choose to believe
In the illusion
Of separation,

And play in the fields
Of duality.

Eventually, however the
Suffering the world
Of opposites engenders
Becomes intolerable
And we seek a better way.

That way leads to Atonement
And reunion with our Creator
The Oneness
That we are.

" Twin Souls"

John and Rev. Ananda McIntosh

write on....