Who Cares - What Matters
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?
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!
Hard to believe isn’t it?
GREATNESS meets us face to face and we Recognized it N O T more times than we actually ever do!
In fact, by now you actually know The Story:
A man sat a metro station in Washington, DC and started playing the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. No one actually stopped. A few slowed their paces; some children paused and had to be pulled away by their parents but no one really stopped, lingered, L I S T E N E D.
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!
So many, many things can happen in just one simple, significant second.
I almost learned immediately in 1994 when I became a Chaplain for Hospice that folks who were in my care would often use me as a mirror.
I really feel that when we undeniably know that we are NOT going to live forever, that in fact, we’ve all been born with a lethal sexually transmitted disease called, LIFE, that we have very basic, essential fears that set in like a disease itself. A fear like, “What about my appearance? What am I going to end up looking like as DISease DISsembles my body?”
It amazes me how people use US as their mirrors. They don’t have to look in a mirror to see what they look like, they just have to watch our expressions when we walk in the room and see them. Amazing still how it just might not be ‘the sick’ who use the mirror trick.
We all look for recognition and acceptance in the eyes of those who look upon us!
So…be the eye, the camera, the mirror that Accepts, Acknowledges, Affirms, Authorizes another.
What does it take to do so?
How much Money is involved and needs exchanged?
How long does it take?
A Second. . .a simple, sincere second.
Psssssst: Don’t give it a Second Look!
(Give it Always/ALL Ways Unlimited Looks)
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?
It’s what we seek most in our lives, isn’t it?
A S S U R A N C E.
We may buy Insurance to protect us from financial disaster for crashed cars, burned-down houses, loss of limb or even life. . .but it’s the ASSURANCE of each of these things, the great ‘what-ever’ it is we deem to be LIFE that we ultimately seek.
The Season of Lights. . .does it ever end?
Maybe the real question is: DO YOU LET IT?
Light is always in Season…no Season exists without it.
Let’s prove it. Do YOU a favor. For the next 30 days, three times a day, once in the morning, afternoon and then before bed, repeat the following from, The Candle Maker.
WHEN THE FLAME IS GONE, I AM NOT EXTINGUISHED. . .
I will never cease to be since I am being unceasingly created. I have not been a goal fulfilled. I am a Purpose constantly unfolding and on-going. My flame, flickered and small as it might become, is only promised and portrayed to become a part of an even greater illumination. When the Candle Maker began this good work, this momentous beam in me, it was under the conditions that he would be faithful to complete it. It matters, not how, why, where or when but THAT it’s completed in me! I AM NOW, at this very moment, a part of that Light that is in this World and which makes the one I am ever being melted.
My reward for blazing is only to burnish brighter and without end. I don’t have to wait for some darkened, engulfed ending. I Kindle forever. Once lit–always–eternally glowing. Today I will glow brightest.
This is the last Today I have to live and I will gleam radiantly in it, through it, and just for it. I am grateful for this day; for this darkness entrusted to me to light; for the warm glowing shimmer emanating deathlessly in me.
Nothing can take place on this last Today that will cause me to be extinguished.
My pulse will dance excitedly like a jubilant flame reaching out to the darkness. I will be the last brilliant gleam the long night can ever know, and assuredly, the very first ray the sunshine has to offer in the morning of that day which has no end.
If delegated, I will burn old with an eternally young, exuberant fire.
I will not be extinguished this day because out of all the possibilities,this is the one great impossibility: I know no real endings. . .just endless beginnings. . .starting NOW! Forever!
Hmmmmmm, just about a minute and a half, three times a day.
LIGHT: Is Always in Season. . .No Season exists without it!
Unless. . . .
It was purely a chance meeting–If there truly is such a thing.
Michelle Brown is a Team-Leader at Hospice of the Western Reserve. We ran into each other and after asking how we were doing and the recent Thanksgiving Holiday, she paused and then with a tear in her eye that was half-twinkle she told me about feeder goldfish. Hmmmmm…where can this possible go, right?
How about a Direct Hit to the Heart!
She told me that she and her husband didn’t go out and buy expensive, exotic fish, but ‘RESCUED’ feeder goldfish, who in this case weren’t in the greatest shape. They had somehow caught some kind of disease, that not only seemed to be killing them, one by one, but actually with fish parts falling off, were seemingly dying painfully.
In fact, just when she thought she was exceedingly adding to their suffering and was about to euthanize them she noticed something. . .something quite remarkable. The goldfish that were in the worst shape were actually being nurtured, by those who were in less bad shape. She stated that she saw how they would take turns, literally siding up besides the sickest and showing an overwhelming amount of compassion as they provided, dare I state it: PRESENCE!
Absurd?
I once saw two squirrels chasing one another and one inadvertently had run onto the street and got hit by a car even though it swerved to miss it. The car didn’t stop. I did. I actually saw the squirrel that was chasing the one now hit and killed, ran into the street and pull it off the road. I was paralyzed.
I’m sure there’s some YouTube/Google-ifric posts that would verify even much greater ANIMAL acts of Compassion.
Michelle wondered out loud about the WHY of it all…was she doing more harm than good, even though her intention was quite the opposite?
We then both wondered, maybe IT was to Teach. . .Teach her The Lesson, to Teach me the Lesson, to Teach You The Lesson, for you to Teach others The Lesson. . .I mean, isn’t that Life at it’s best and how it’s been handed down, benefited and handed down again?
It’s all about this Compassionate Presence isn’t it?
Maybe what SHOUTED OUT to me the Loudest is, if a Feeder Goldfish can show that kind of compassionate presence to one of it’s own, suffering and dying, then. . .then what about Me–You–Others?
Hmmmmmm for $10,000.00, Alex