First off, Merry Christmas to all and to all a less stressful New Year. We made it through the first year of the Trump presidency and rather pray for more peace in the world. Yes, I know, even though that seems like a big ask we have no choice if we consider ourselves conscious beings working for the betterment of mankind, not just the satisfaction of ego and personal aggrandizement. It’s not a big ask to dream of and manifest the world we’d like to be living in.
We do have the power to alter circumstances, change our lot. We stand alone or we stand in concert with every living entity. The more we imagine, the more we can manifest. Getting caught in the day-to-day melee can become a distraction as much as it strives for accomplishment. The world today has differing ideas of accomplishment. We think about having a vision, a picture that encompasses what we believe and a life that provides us with the abilities and means to enjoy it, have faith in our own deliverance.
With the Christmas season upon us, it’s time to look at all we’ve been holding onto. No time limit back on this. What was the one dream that stood out above all the others? Have we kept it in the forefront of our mind, and do we have a program in place to make it a reality? Are some dreams too fanciful to be real? Have we found ourselves wishing for, yet not really committed to pursuing the answers we are shown? Do we believe our opportunities are restricted because we don’t have the means to overcome the obstacles?
That’s the one our societies use to have us conform to the “systems,” the known versus the pathways for imagination to take wings, honor our greatest gifts, leave the pages and pageants we’ve read and performed for the visions that won’t let go. The doubts, obligations, responsibilities, long friendships, familiar haunts, those wonderfully reaffirming relationships that have helped mold who we are. We are not free of ourselves. We are owned not by the world but by ourselves.
The world around us doesn’t see it that way. Here come the holidays and we step into the shoes of the wishful and the responsible, the loving and faithful, the greater family as well as the alone. The scrooges have now learned that there are three apparitions that may appear to remind them of who they really are and where they live. Embedded in our psyche the ghosts reappear to remind us of the debt we owe each other. How can we take vision and build consciousness, not just material quests? How can we engage our compassion in order to see and feel the heart expressing its joy?
“We hold these truths to be self- evident,” our fathers wrote. We cannot any longer fool
ourselves into accepting less than what is in our highest best interests. That’s plural.
That’s a bottom line from which grace flows in unending beams of light. Magic is not just the provenance of performance but the power within given to us to use, to elevate, to experience the power of the divine. We cannot look away, cannot accept that we are less than this. This is not high and mighty, not the provence of the few, nor the inaccessible and lofty, it lies within us all. It’s what we are.
In my retirement, time is precious and my goals need to be very specific and realizable. I’ve always been the outgoing and expressive sort, reminding myself to keep connected, eyes and ears on the sounds around me. My novel “The Preposterous Tale of Dan and Lee” will be available on Amazon Kindle very soon, (seems to take forever), and I hope you will find my two heroes engaging and provocative. We can be caught in the middle, or we can be engaging with the world as it is, free to glide above its carnivalesque landscape, lead the way clear- eyed and receptive to its challenges. Dan and Lee offer a glimpse of what freedom of mind and spirit can be, dirty hands or not. We’re in a world of our own making.
I began the idea for this My Turn incorporating much of the ironies we meet head-on day to day and then thought: How would I say what’s really important to hear when what is happening around us is so devoid of honor, at least what we see on the news and in the papers. I have my heroes though, there are the good guys for sure, and it’s always the grand combat of the merciful vs the merciless. Let us all be the real heroes and stand up for charity, love, honor, beauty, fearlessness, and faith this holiday season. Love to all.
Alan Harris and wife Jane with son Paul enjoy Shelburne Falls and its many blessings.