The Year Of Love

Heeeeeyyy!?!?! I can't believe that it is three years since I posted anything here.  It seems like a very short while ago that I sat down to write about "the Perfect Storm" that was my family reunion in 2012 which I quickly deleted.  I never had the heart for telling that story.  The events surrounding that last family reunion coalesced and cascaded and grew ever larger and more powerful, and overtook us and carried us ALL off and away from our homes, our comforts, our normal.

Which is where I write from today. Staying with Momma at Myrtle Beach while she composes the ending of her life story.  Rarely visiting my home.  Rarely seeing my friends.  Rarely seeing my son. Poor husband John home alone (finally living out the movie he loves so much) with visits from me every couple, two, three weeks to stir things up.  A very different place than my last writing found me.

In some ways this time of great change has been a miracle. Richard Bach and other people have written that every disaster contains a blessing and every blessing contains a disaster.  This past three years have been a case study of that concept working in my life.  Mom sold her house and moved South.  The move broke her back and Gil's and they never recovered. Gil has died. Momma is weaker than before but still holding onto her life on her own terms.  The rest of us are accommodating these changes and others.

I did not go to Italy.  I did find a great Italian restaurant right down the street here in Myrtle Beach. I did not take a tropical retreat to an exotic destination, but I live a couple of blocks from the ocean. I thought I would take the time to go deep and write my soul and spirit whole.  The Universe is a trickster!  I got a part time job at a church and gave my soul and spirit quite a workout!  But hardly wrote a thing.

You know I set lessons for myself every year in the form of a word chosen for reflection and study:  Peace, Joy, Service, Hope. Every year's lesson taught me deeply in unexpected ways.  And yes, sometimes I tried to take short cuts in advancing my education.  But these life lessons are not to be skimmed through. 'Peace' and 'Joy' brought me great satisfaction.  'Service' was thorough, intense, and by the end of that year I was exhausted.  Hope was especially brutal.  It seemed the curriculum was to have Hope dashed as often and as hard as possible.  I am OVER Hope. By the end of each year I was ready, sometimes more than ready, to move on to the next year's word.

Love is my study word for 2015.  At first I thought it might be a sweet class. Valentines?  Candy hearts?  Goopey smooches? Oh Boy. The lesson began with promises made earnestly:  "No, I will not leave you Mom.  We will do whatever you want to do.  Anything is possible.  I will help". Already I am challenged to keep these promises by John's health crises and Mom's inability to settle on a course of action.  I face big physical effort packing this house and moving us into a different place but   I have expended my resources (physical, financial and others) and have no way of knowing when or how I can rebuild them.

Still, I think Love is going to be a Great Course.  Remember, every disaster holds a blessing.

My first text for 2015 is a little book I got on kindle...in a very strange way.  It appeared as a book sample which I have no memory of adding to my library.  The book is "Love is All There Is: The Revelation of Heaven of Earth, authored by The Source, and in first person tells how Love is All There IS.  Source is Love.  Living in Love is Heaven.  Everything other than love is unreality and insanity.  Dwelling in unLove is hell.  Source has created us in Love for Love.  We will eventually get it.

Next there was the Gift.  A pearl locket given to me by Aunt Lib and Uncle Bill.  It came as a kit containing an unopened oyster and an empty locket with a little cross clasp. A tiny oyster knife.  The poem "Footprints".  You open your oyster and find your pearl and place it in your locket.  There are five colors of pearl possible in these kits.  Each color stands for a different quality.  My pearl is a golden peach color which is for the quality of Love!  I added the locket to my necklace of talismans and I will wear it always.

Then yesterday on my drive into work every song that played on my radio was a love song.   :)

I call these little synchronicities "angelic whispers"...gentle nudges along the path that help us find our way...guiding lights that lead us through the fog or even the darkness that obscures our view.

That little book I got teaches that we love at all times.  We do not judge.  We do not envy.  We do not anger or fear.  All we do is love.  "Love is all there is".  We are made of the stuff.  Go in Love, it guides me.  I have already learned "Do all things with Love".  Source says that every time you choose Love, heaven expands.  It says that the more you choose love, the more you will choose love. It soothes, "surrender to love...take joy in love....rest in love".  Then Source charges:  Wage Peace in this World.  That is such a power-packed charge.  Wage Peace.  I want to do that.

The locket talisman reminds me again.  A slight weight dangling at my heart and a single word is whispered: Love.

That "perfect storm" of a family reunion brought out the worst in me.  The faces of many of the people I had loved all my life-52 years by that time- became strangers to me. I lost trust in the family, the clan, that up to that time I would have said was the bedrock of me.  My own mother was so mean to me over it that I swore out loud I was DONE with her.  And in this violent hurricane of unlove, the me I wanted to think I was got tossed into the waves and washed up here like some kind of shipwreck.

So can I really learn this? Live this?  I get so pissed off sometimes when I can't make the planet spin my way. :)

Well, it is school.  I will study on this waging of peace.  This giving and receiving, this choosing love.  I think I have a lot to learn.  And if at the end of 2015 I am pitching the word through somebody's window or maybe just tossing it quietly in the bin, selecting another word for 2016 with gratitude for having come to the end of a tough exploration, at least I can say I attempted one year to wage peace in this world and to know love more fully than I had before.

"And yet I will show you the most excellent way" (1 Cor 12:31) "Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13) "Follow the way of love" (1 Cor 14:1)
(ok, I took liberties, but I may well return to the "gifts of the spirit" parts at another time.)

You are Love. Love is more than a feeling; it is the essence of you. Love is your birthright; your Divinity. Love is your consciousness; Love is Source. As you rise in Love, you rise in Divinity and the Truth of you. Love is not attached, nor is emotional in nature. Love is Acceptance and is never in duality, separation or judgment. Breathe into your Heart and feel that which you are. Feel the Peace.
-Soulstice Rising Ascension Notes

Breathe into your Heart.  :)  Feel the Peace  :)  Love that Stuff!  :)

You are Love. Love is more than a feeling; it is the essence of you. Love is your birthright; your Divinity. Love is your consciousness; Love is Source. As you rise in Love, you rise in Divinity and the Truth of you. Love is not attached, nor is emotional in nature. Love is Acceptance and is never in duality, separation or judgment. Breathe into your Heart and feel that which you are. Feel the Peace.