A poem written by a dear friend...


Returning

It's to you I return once more, sweet singer
of my soul, little child, holiest Mystery.
May you pour forth always, joyful and clear,
a gaily running brook or dancing fountain.

Nothing this world can boast--neither fame
nor fortune, praise nor bread, could equal
your innocence, or replace your simplicity.
I'd rather die than know that you were dead.

It's to you I return once more, secred lover
of my heart, little child, sacred Miracle.
May you flourish always, tender and real,
a fruitful, nurturing tree, a shading pool.

Whatever I do, whatever I hope to be, you
are my Source, My Light, my Song, my Home.
Beyond the danger of the nights, the struggle
of the days, may all my paths return to Thee.


***

Bob Savino -- 8/9/99

Surrender

"Surrender is a beautiful movement in which you gracefully, willingly, languidly fall, only to find midway that you have been gathered into some unimaginable embrace. Surrender is letting go, whether or not you believe the embrace will occur. It’s trust to the hundredth power–not sticking to your idea of the outcome, but letting go in the faith that even the absence of an outcome will be the perfect solution.

Surrender is diaphanous and fluid. It’s the giving up of rigidity of every kind: rigidities of the mind that design outcomes to occur in very specific ways; rigidities of the heart that refuse the heart to be soft and open; rigidities of the body that refuse to receive the touch that could heal, the passion that could transform; rigidities of the soul that congeal and congest the spirit, causing it to imagine it has a life apart from the body and mind.

Surrender is the meltdown of every rigidity we’ve ever been committed to, the conscious and unconscious dismantling of how we thought things should be to make way for the way things will, in fact, occur. It’s a kind of being surprised by joy, of happily swimming into the greater consciousness that’s always operating on our behalf. Just as a child, learning how to swim, discovers, amazed, that the water does hold him up, so surrender buoys us up, supports us for the fulfillment of our destinies.

Surrender requires purity of intention. In the absolute freedom it grants in response to our letting go, it requires an absolute commitment of holding on to nothing. Whatever you thought you had–the idea, the expectation, the plan, the hope of how things should be you must let go of it fully. Surrender is stepping away from the certainty of your categories into the no-man’s-land of all possibilities.

And it is in surrendering, in letting go into the void–into the mysterious, unnamed, mystical, formless future; into the arms that are invisible–that we become finally ready to receive all. Surrender is the giving of your all to the All; the waiting with an absolute absence of expectation for the totally perfect thing to occur."

~Daphne Rose Kingma

The Key to Playing the Game of Life

This clip is from one of my favorite movies, the Sandlot, where the esteemed "Benny the jet Ramirez" imparts the secret of playing baseball to the heavily ridiculed, clueless new kid "Scotty Smalls." This secret turns out to be the key that helps him to unlock his ability to play the game.
The message is simple: STOP THINKING AND JUST PLAY! What a great message.

If we listen to the deeper meaning in Benny's message, we will find that applies to our daily lives. The message becomes...If we acted out of the belief that there is a Deep, Instinctual, Infinite wisdom within us that is readily available to guide us, that it IS guiding us now, that we are inseparable from it...If we lived this knowledge, how simple life would be! How often we so over think and over complicate things in our lives that are truly simple to the point where we bury our own truths and solutions, making them unaccessible to ourselves, discoverable only through great and unnecessary effort.

However, when we embrace the moment, when we live in the now...when we cast our fears, self consciousness and self doubt aside, when we throw ourselves into life's beautiful and mysterious concoction with abandon and zeal, we are able to engage not only with ourselves but with others, with LIFE completely. We are able to see what we are actually capable of and are able to unlock the greatest good each moment has for us.

And still there's more...As Benny the Jet encourages Smalls, the Spirit encourages us to just raise our open gloves in the air, to hold them there, to TRUST, to cease all striving, distraction and fear, and It will send our utmost good our way, straight into our mitts. All we have to do is believe, to "be still and know."

The Power of Transcendence

So much of life we tend to spend on an earthly level, recycling thinking others have done for us, rehearsing situations that have already happened and otherwise circling and circling with our own limited intellect. However, when we open up and tap into the God consciousness, otherwise known as the Divine Mind, we are able to crawl out of our little holes and enter in to an expansive universe that has no boundaries. We are able to embrace true clarity and conceive ideas without limits, without the weight of fear or self doubt. When we do not attempt to enter in to this higher realm, it is as though we are only living in the bottom floor of our house. But, the top floor is where the light pours in with the most beauty, the place where we can have the greatest perspective of all that surrounds, the place where the leaves rustle close enough to touch. It is time to take an adventure, to put our keys in those rusty locks and venture to the top floor, to chase the true, living perspective that can only be found in the place where the Spirit dwells.