A new year. It could be your first or your ninetieth. A chance to start fresh, see the past as complete. Today is ours and today is when we get to make new choices. Maybe better ones. Decisions. Maybe wiser ones. Reactions. Maybe more compassionate ones. We are always progressing, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Overall when we look back, we have come a long way. Fought some hard fights. Faced some tough times. But now we are at the beginning. Not starting again, but starting afresh.

New Year, new peace. Love illumines life.

There is something pleasant about coming to the end of a year. Even if we don’t reflect at all, it can be a relief to feel it is over. Then we take a week or two settling into the time of the year when the belief is about a birthday of a worldwide, renowned peacemaker, love-inspirer, miracle-maker and joy bringer. Next, a new leaf is turned. Starting afresh with many lists. Resolutions made with a good heart, a sense of another chance to do a bit better, be a bit better, forgive a little more, love a lot more and expect things to change for the better.

A lovely time of the year.

Blessings.

Patience, my precious one, life hones and smoothes those jagged edges. You can’t be all you are until you have been around and lived. Those challenges are ways forward, through the grit that grinds your soul to some better gentleness. A blossom eventually blooms. A caterpillar eventually unfurls. And you, one day, you are ready to beam as the bright light that is all of you.

In the breeze and the stillness of the day

I am in the silence when night falls

I am at one with rushing waters and curling waves

I am the baby’s breath and laughter

I am the gentle hands that hold the saddened
and distressed

I am there when rage erupts and anger boils

I am there in the best and the worst

I Am. There and here. Always.

Do you flow or end up in a crevice, eddying around in muddy waters, wondering, 

mulling, becoming stagnant? Dismayed. Or do you recognise the flow goes over

the rocks never noticing the whirls of discontent, gurgling with joy at being itself? 

Freedom cascading in delight, journeying forever and expectant of millions of moments of light.

Look out and what do you see? A different view each day?

A different mood. A new and lighter sight. A darkened sky?

Inside the room the mind vanishes and finds itself elsewhere

It may be a crisper winter scene, or a spring green shoot day

In an instant the outside expands, the mind can fly

The room remains the same. Time is playing outside all day.

Nature has a way of blowing us away. Sometimes there is something extraordinary … blowsy, outgoing, ebullient, even fierce, that takes our breath away. Life does it too, but nature can put on a huge show and these peonies from my garden are showing off whether they are seen or not. They are just shouting loud about themselves as they are. How full of life, light, joy and colour these are. They are fully ON.

We are nature but I am not sure we all have the confidence to be quite so bold. But why not? I feel I should be expressing the same divinity that is within all things with fulsome sass, great energy, gratitude, wonder and a whack of showing off.

Yes, let’s all be the enormity of who we really are. No more hiding. Exuberance is being truthful.

In extremis. In excelsis

In the farthest depths…

In the highest places …

We are loved.

We are Divine Love.

Scuplture from exhibition Delamore Arts, May 2010

Chaos and calm

fear and resolve

then a day dawns

when you wake up and feel

It’s okay. It’s better. It’s clearing.

Where does the memory

of those hard times go?

Where does the dark go when

the sun shines?

… then what can we do to be part of that ?

You are part of it as a natural consequence of your very being.

You are already all you need to be, in any one moment, and cannot,

as decreed by Divine law, be anything else.

You only have to ‘Be Still’ to know this truth.

You can make changes in the world by

Changing your view and understanding that

All is well, in every moment, no matter what the ‘world story’ presents as truth.

How do you know that?

In moments of peace, it becomes apparent. Be still

And you will never question it again

You will seek out that peace more often.

Then you will see how love illumines life.