Who Cares - What Matters
There’s such a very huge distance between Looking and Seeing.
When’s the last time you, you just didn’t look but actually saw what’s behind the eyes, the face of everyone you meet?
Granted, we’re all very busy and it would be just so much easier if we could wear a special set of glasses that would identify the pain of each person, known and unknown to us in a very specific way–taking out all of the guess work.
A Simple game, huh?
But why, why is it we take the Simple and make it so complicated?
To make it more important? For it to be taken seriously? To take it more seriously?
Would it make the Checkers Plan inconceivable?
The plan can be implemented in any area of your life, especially the most troublesome ones.
Hit the Rewind button and go back with me for a little bit. When, exactly, was the the last time you actually played a spirited game of Checkers?
Yesterday or yesteryear?
I often show this short clip when teaching on Compassion or Compassionate Presence. I firmly believe that it allows us, in less than two minutes, experience the power of this Compassionate Presence which has more power than some high-powered medications.
If Compassion could be dispensed like a medication, would it be an illegal substance?
Would it come with a prescription?
Could you be inoculated with it?
Could it be used for an intended, overdose?
Barely 50+ hours into the New Year. How’s it going?
Wait. . .Did you expect Resolutions Made = Resolutions Accomplished? It’ll take just a little bit more time, commitment and persistence.
Would it be alright if we took a Lesson from my book, The Candle Maker? For the next 28 days in the morning, afternoon and evening would you recite, out loud the Candle Maker’s Pledge?
Give this a try. You only need 95 seconds, three times a day; 4 minutes and five seconds total.
REPEAT:
With unlimited wick and wax, burnout is burnt out. . .so I will remain perpetual. I am not tired or tiring. I am potent and energizing. YES! I am extremely happy and joyous.
My face only know the contentment of a smile. My lips only know how to curve upwards. My nose only smells the fragrance of sweet success. My eyes only search out and expect to see good things.
I cannot be defeated today. I cannot be be let down or disappointed. It is utterly impossible for me to be all used up in this day no matter what happens to me or how often it happens. I am a cup that cannot be emptied, only over and ever flowing!
I intimately know the Candle Maker. I am privileged enough to be always where he stores wax and wick.
I can forever this day, burn profusely at both ends and especially in the middle of the candle without interruption or sputter because I am never without perpetual amounts of wax and wick.
Though others around me will tire and grow weary, I will only get stronger, brighter, more steady and intense as the day lightens into dusk, then a darkness for me to illuminate.
This day, I can neither be snuffed out or burnt up. I am already eternal. I will insure my immortality this day, and all others I am gifted to receive by glowing, guiding, and giving endlessly.
I will burn. YES! Give Light. YES! Provide warmth and all through the day and long into the darkening night. I will leave nothing that the day or night can offer. I have been supplied mightily. My wax and wick have no end. Because the source is so close, so all giving, and in so many locations, I am no match to any darkness this day or ever.
YES! My wax and wick are ceaseless and darkness knows me not!
Don’t Resolve. . .C O M M I T to the Candle Maker’s pledge for the next 28 days, 4 minutes a day.
You just may get a little bit brighter, warmer, illuminated and enlightened. . .and definitely not dimmer!
Well, do you or don’t you?
I don’t!
I’m not a list maker to begin with. . .my sticky notes never stay stuck, and if they do, it’s usually something I didn’t intend them to get stuck to and they end up getting lost, forgotten, well–you get the picture.
I adamantly Resolve N O T to Resolve!
Guess what? It’s only 363 days away. Are you excited? What’s your plans? Where are you going to meet with family and friends? Are there any White Elephant Gift Collections, office parties, get-togethers? Have the requests been made, the shopping lists compiled? Come on. . .it’s going to be here before we know it!
Can you remember?
Seriously. . .Whatever it is that causes you to break out, to Flash Mob in Song, may it happen unexpectedly and repeatedly and more, May you BE the Cause of IT to happen Unexpectedly and Repeatedly (For) to Others.
Discover your very best is so much more than a Season or an event, or an occurrence–a Happening!
Wouldn’t it be great?
You think you’re home for the evening; you have no plans or DO YOU?
Your doorbell rings. You contemplate even answering it, but you do. There’s a man in an elegant tuxedo, top hat, white gloves and a cane. You see over his shoulder that there’s a luxurious limo and he tells you he’s here to escort you to a very special place where “NO” doesn’t exist. You throw on a pair of jeans that don’t have last night’s dinner remains on it and a shirt that doesn’t have the powder sugar your donut snowed all over it just before the doorbell rang.
First time for me in 33 years of Ministry. A double-wedding ceremony.
It took place at the David Simpson Hospice House in Cleveland around 10:15 a.m. on 12/11/13.
Their mother is very sick and is declining rather quickly. “THEY” wanted to do something about as special as a son and a daughter can do for an ailing mother. Take her to a wedding: THEIR’S!
With a small amount of family and friends gathered into The Mediation Room that overlooked an angry Lake Erie on a dishwater gray Winter morning, they wheeled the bed of their mother into that small gathering.
I told them as we began the service, that no matter what Cathedral or highly adorned Sanctuary they’d ever find themselves, it would never be any more sacred than the walls of family and friends that surrounded them right then.
Prisoner No. 46664. Hardly a lucky number, especially since it brought not luck, but lots of hardship and heartache for the 27 years Nelson Mandela wore it as his identity.
Maybe his greatest lesson then, now, and for all of history, is that he indeed was in prison but never imprisoned. Can we truly say that of us?