If life is about the process and the journey, they we can take on the mindset of a traveler.  We all have different styles when it comes to traveling, but ultimately at some point in our travels we encounter the unexpected.  How do you handle the unexpected?  How do face being somewhere that is unfamiliar?  These are the same things that happen in our every day lives.  Most people find a way to adapt.  It might be to hunker down and deal until they get home or look at the unplanned event as an adventure.  We always have a choice.  If I trust that God has my back at all times and somehow the unexpected turns out in the end, then I can trust that where my traveling path takes me is exactly where I am supposed to go.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to see our journey as an adventure in learning whatever it is we are being called to learn anew in our hearts.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I spent most of my life thinking that I should know how to do things I didn’t know how to do.  I could try to rack my brain to figure out when I developed that story, but it is rather unimportant.  What is important is recognizing the ridiculousness of the story.  Why would I know how to do things I have never done before?  I don’t expect that of other people.  I think it has something to do with saving face.  The simplest and humblest thing that we can do is ask for help.   We can take the moments of not knowing and use them to create connection with other people.  Yes, I am talking about being vulnerable.  It is not about being perfect and knowing it all.  Besides I have never wanted to get close to those “perfect” and “know-it-all” people because all I see is how I don’t measure up.  Life is not a contest to be won it  is a race to run.  The only time you need compare is your own.  My prayer for us today is that we look upon our not knowings as opportunities to reach out and create a connection with those around us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We hear all the time that people don’t like change.  I heard even more acutely once that it is not change we don’t like but the transition. Most people would tell you that they want to be healthy and eat to fuel their body, but it is the transition of letting go of certain foods that they are not interested in.  We are always up for the end result, we fear the process to the end result.  Isn’t it hilarious then that life is about living the process?  I learned this very acutely in acting.  I must enjoy the process because in the end an actor’s job is to get rejected–no fun.  I had to alter my perspective on auditions and classes and decide to enjoy each step along the process, otherwise there was no point.  If I were to measure it by the number of jobs I got or the times the work I did actually was seen by other people, I would be a failure.  Instead I get to see each audition as a chance to show up and do something different.  I suppose I have this luxury because it is not my primary means of income, but that is a decision that I have made.  I think we all have things in our lives in which we are okay with being in the process.  The key is to transfer that experience to the parts of our lives where we are resistant to living in the process.  We can notice the difference in our perspective and be open to the possibility of the change in our hearts in all areas of our lives.  My prayer for you today is that you acknowledge and celebrate the ways in which you are open to being altered by heart of God and allow yourself to be in the process.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Life is so full and there is so much too it.  When we steps outside our mind’s eye and into our hearts, it can seem overwhelming.  Being connected to the source of all sources grounds us in where we go with our perspective.  Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it.  Like it or not, we are responsible for our experience because it is not what is happening but how we are viewing, understanding, making meaning out of what happens.  If we take a moment to breathe that in, there may be some sadness and confusion.  Our minds have spent so long in the notion that things happen to us and we have no control.  It is true that we cannot control what happens, but we can control our perspective.  We can be open and change our perspective so that we see what is happening as for our greater good.  We have the ability to respond, not just react.  Our automatic mind functions would like us to believe that reacting is the way to go and it is what we have done for most of our lives.  That is survival.  This time in our lives, however, we are called to step up and take responsibility. To own the power of our ability to respond.  We cannot, or at least I cannot do this alone.  I need God.  I am humbled every time that I try to handle it all on my own.  There is much to respond to and so I need the guidance that comes from one who sees and knows all.  My prayer for us today is that we may have the courage to ask for help to step up and respond where we might want to react.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

Have you ever asked God for a sign?  And then, felt like nothing happened? Yep, been there, done that!  It makes you wonder if anyone Greater is really out there.  But what if we were being handed signs left and right we just didn’t recognize them?  What if God was constantly  giving us signs and messages but we were focused on it being the way we imagined it to be that we missed it?  What if God created a system in which God would speak to us through other people, “random” events, and our bodies?  What if God waited until we got quiet to speak to our hearts?  God speaks in soft and quiet tones, through our feelings and nudgings in our body.  It took me a long time to realize that I had to clear away some debris from my life (old stories, angers, hurts, resentments) and get quiet enough to hear God.  Sure, I have had moments like St. Paul where I was knocked “off my horse” and blinded and then restored to new sight/perspective.  But, most of the time it is through small ways.  Just like when we are in relationships, they first start off with a spark, an excitement and newness.  As time goes on it is finding the spark in small ways because not every night can be date night, but every night can have a date like experience.  It all depends on what we are focusing on.  Another one of my favorite prayers of comfort in those not so exploding time of connection with God, comes from Thomas Merton,

The gift of our presence to the world is beyond our understanding.  If we had an inkling of the power of our presence, of how important our drop in the ocean or star in the sky is we would see ourselves in a completely different way.  Do you realize that the reason you were given a breath this morning and able to open your eyes is because the world cannot do without you today?  Your creator sees you as indispensable to the moments for which you are called to be present.  The gift of your attention is being asked of you today to the moments that will show up as you put one foot in front of the other.  You need not worry about what will happen today and when or with whom.  You need only focus on what you can bring through the gift of your presence and attention to those moments.  Yes, the moments you will spend standing in line, sitting in traffic, laughing, watching a movie, waiting on the phone, getting irritated by your friend who insists on having her way.  All of those moments you are called to be attentive in only a way that you can. This is because you are the perfect person to be right there at that moment and to bring love.  This is what makes our lives so important–our capacity to love.  The difficulty is that when we are not present, we cannot bring the love.  The challenge is to remember that when we don’t feel like bringing love to a moment we can ask for help.   It does not come solely from us, it is generated from the very same Creator who has called us to be attentive to the moment.  My prayer for you today  when you are faced with a moment you would rather escape from that you have the courage to ask the Creator of you and that moment to give you what is most needed in the best way you can.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

What we focus on expands.  What we pay attention to attends to our minds.  If I am focusing on the problems in my life, it is no wonder that I find myself in a state of pain and discomfort.  First of all, the mind that is focusing on the problem cannot be the same mind to get me out of the problem.  I need intervention. This is where my connection to God comes in.  I must ask God for help to intervene in my thinking.  The quickest way for me to do this is turn my attention to what I am grateful for.  I am not saying I want to do this or that I am pretending that there aren’t difficult things in my life to face, but if I am focused on them I cannot see outside of them.  I need to renew my mind, open it up something more than what it is seeing.  Then I can face the situation or “the problem” with a greater power.  Besides, focusing on my fortunes allows me time to breathe.  It gives me the moment to recognize that in this very moment all is well.  Many years ago I came across this simple affirmation:  “The universe is abundant and all my needs are being met.”  For someone who grew up with a lot of anxiety and fear around money, who found themselves unemployed without much savings or a real plan as of that moment of how I was going to make it through the next few months ahead, I needed a new perspective.  First, I had to get into gratitude: sometimes this means saying it out loud, writing it down or telling another person.  Then I could look at the affirmation and recognize its truth.  The universe is abundant–I see it all around me in nature.  And in that moment all my needs were being met.  If I could hold on to that belief for that moment and that day I was able to walk through every time the fear thoughts would enter my mind about having to move back home and live on my parents’ couch.    The next several months flew by and as I got into action in my life I managed to enter another job in a different profession.  When I did, my whole perspective had changed and my relationship to my work changed.  Then, when I found myself unemployed again 2.5 years later I was not as overwhelmed by fear.  My prayer for you today is whatever “problem” you are facing that you have the courage to bring it to God and ask for a new way of seeing things and then begin to think of your fortunes (gratitudes).  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I am not sure if it is a common human dilemma but the idea that I know tomorrow is going to come seems to pervade my experience.  Maybe it was listening to the “Sun will come out tomorrow” from Annie too many times as a kid, but I realize that I don’t know about tomorrow.  All I can focus on is today.  Yet, I often find myself in the trap of what is to come, as if I have a crystal ball.  I always say that I could wake up tomorrow and get hit by a truck for all I know so, there is no point in focusing on what might or might not happen tomorrow or next week or next year.  Today is the only day I have and when I recognize that God is now and today, life is much easier to handle.  The reality of my experience is that most of what I feared about the future has come and gone and none of it was as bad as I thought it might be.  But how much precious time and energy of the day did I lose to focus on the future or the past?  For me, at the end of the day when my head hits the pillow if I was able to be as present as possible in my day, in the moment I did well.  If I was meant to be in tomorrow or yesterday, I would be.  My mind likes to escape the moment because it is uncomfortable and one of the ways it does that is to think about tomorrow or yesterday.  I heard a great line once, “If I have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday then I am pissing on today.”  Quite graphic but I got the point.  God gives me whatever I need to handle today, this moment.  Whatever I am cycling through in my thinking, feeling, being needs all my energy and focus. Even if I am thinking I don’t want to be right here, right now, it is usually because I feel like it’s too much.  This is a dead giveaway that I am not including God.  When I let go and realize that God is with me, God has got me, and together we can do what I could never do alone, then I can breathe–in and out, in and out, and so it goes.  My prayer for us today is that we surrender to the cycle of life that we are experiencing today and get in touch with how we are being cared for by our creator through this very moment.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Life seems to be going along just fine and then BAM!, we get hit by something out of nowhere.  It is not usually a plane crash, but it is a plan crash.  Then our minds begin to figure a way to navigate around the destruction of the plans we had in place. We each have a different response when our plans go awry.  Sometimes we will struggle to keep what was planned in the first place.  Other times we will adapt to where things are in the moment and as soon as there is any opening, go back to the original plan.  Yet other times we will abandon the plan entirely with or without any hope of what is to come next.  But what if there was a different way all together?  What if when our plans go awry and we are bothered it is a good thing?  What if it means that God really has a chance to be in charge because we have lost control?  And if God is in control then we can just relax and show up?  My prayer for you today is that you recognize the beautiful disasters that you will experience as God’s gifts of freedom to just be.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We think we are here to live our lives.  Ultimately we are here to encourage others and to serve one another.  Our lives are given to us so that we might enliven, encourage, inspire, and testify to the power of love.  The funny thing is that we interpret service to one another as sacrifice of self.  Yes, it means letting go of our ego, but the giving to others cannot be from a place of void.  We cannot justify our existence by what or how we give to others.  We are called to be God to the world.  God is in all things including the quirky elements of your personality.  God needs you to show up in this world as you.  Being of service does not mean people pleasing.  Being of service means God pleasing.  By being the best version of yourself, God enables you to be of service and to inspire others.  God is constantly reminding us not to worry.  Just be you.  Be kind and use who you are to give love to others.  My prayer for us today is that we strengthen who we are as God’s children so that is the love that we bring to one another.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen