Walking The Journey

One of my favorite holidays as a child was always Halloween. A time to be anything I wanted to be, what I’d imagined for myself throughout the year, fulfilling those fantasy day dreams. Halloween is a time when a child can be anything he wants or anything that he can dream to be. And of course, all the free candy is every child’s dream. The resulting tooth decay and toothaches, well, that’s another issues. Halloween is a time of being a child again for adults as well. We get to dress up in creative ways, maybe reenacting our childhood or being what we wish we could be, much like our child counterparts. For me as an adult, Halloween is a time to watch joy shining from the eyes of my children, entertaining the children of the neighborhood, contributing to the dental bills of their parents. Some in my neighborhood thrive on Halloween, decorating their homes showing their holiday spirit. But of all the elements of Halloween, I have to say the most important for me, back as a child and ...

The day is October 26, 2009. The time is 0710 hours. The goal: get to school on time. Load up, seat belts on, key in ignition, turn, engine roars, and Christmas music plays from the radio. Yeah, not what you expected to read, and not what I expected to hear. Turning to my son, as he turned to me, both saying at the same time, “Christmas Music”, both shocked. I mean, it’s not even Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I happen to be a big fan of Christmas music and yes, I will listen to Christmas music “out of season”. I believe that I’m the only one delighted in hearing the joyful sounds of Christmas in October. But again, in October! Isn’t life like Christmas Music in October? We walk along, plan our days, do our best to enjoy our life, and out of the blue, Christmas in October. We are creatures full of expectations from those we love, from our children, from our work, from our friends, pretty much from life. Even though we are fully aware that life offers no guarantees, we easily convin...

After about 3 days of a cold, or illness, or whatever it is that has invaded my body, I get pretty tired of it all. I can find myself getting cranky, the physical part affecting the emotional part. I get tired of the lack of energy and motivation illness brings. This all leads to struggling with accepting the fact that I'm sick, not wanting to slow down, not wanting to give in. Stupidity or pride, who's to say, but I just don't want to admit that I'm not up to par. I suppose what I'm talking about is acceptance. In this case, acceptance that I need to slow down and take care of myself, to be a little selfish right now, is what is good and  what I need. In the bigger picture, acceptance plays a major role in many of our issues, not just the physical. We have our perceptions of what life should be and how those close to us, or even those not so close, ought to act. Unfortunately, perceptions are not reality, and acceptance must deal with reality. When we accept li...

The word miracle means so much too so many different people. According to Webster, a miracle is “1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs; 2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment; 3 Christian Science: a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law”. Nice definition for something that is often unexplainable, open to interpretation, and to be quite honest, takes a degree of faith to believe and understand. I often gaze out my third story window, through tinted glass, across the blacktop parking lot, at the very tall and thin tree, tallest and oldest in the woods, looking back towards me, welcoming me every day. What a miracle he is to behold. I look at my wife and see the love she has for me (which I don’t completely understand – if you knew me, you’d understand this) reflected from the pools of her blue eyes, that cute girlish grin, both saying I love you. My children are miracles ...

Have you ever noticed that as we walk through life, we become a type of magnet, attracting others and their baggage? As we walk through life, our minds become filled with the ghostly voices of the present and past, the people who’ve told us who we are, what we’re supposed to be, what is right and wrong, shaping our character and values. These become the labels that surround the authentic self. It can be difficult to recognize these labels, to identify where they come from, and even harder to begin to let them go. In a logical manner, who would want to hold on to the dysfunctional self defeating labels, habits, and people that divert us from our life direction? Oh, but if emotions and patterns were of a logical clothe, it would be so easy, yet they are not, and their weave runs deep into our souls. It’s as if these labels become who we feel we are, and letting them go can cause much fear, anxiety, and frustration. Letting go is a nice phrase, which appears simple and is yet quite di...

The English language can be very interesting. A friend of mine from the long ago memories of my youth enjoyed using the word “oxymoron”, which when I first heard the word, I assumed it was a negative insult to an individual’s mental capacity. Upon learning the meaning of the word, I too began seeking out the oxymoron’s of the world. Surprisingly, they’re not too difficult to find, including a calendar given to me, by a relative, which was all about oxymoron’s. We also encounter expressions and phrases that often to not seem to go together or in our understanding of our language, don’t fit. Examples from my own experiences would be words like “man”, to address anyone of any gender or age, “stupid” to mean a great experience, and “bad” to mean good. I’m sure a group of 5 people could list multiple such examples. While spending time in Erie, PA, I drove past a store whose sign read, “Big Woody’s Fireworks: Stun guns, pepper spray, throwing stars, walnut chocolate fudge”. Hard to imagi...

The old cult classic, Star Trek, began every episode with, "Space - - - - the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship, Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." The show was a series of the adventures of a captain, his crew, and a space ship as they discovered new worlds and new life forms, different from those of their own. Interestingly, their goal was to seek out, discover, and understand. I recently entered a different world, finding myself amongst a vast group of aliens who dressed different, talked different, and definitely had more energy than I. I found myself in a concert of young artist playing to younger people, in a world of loud noise, jumping screaming youth, flashing lights, and music so loud I still heard it the next day. I may of belonged to a similar world way back when, although quite different from this one, never the less, this ...