It's that time again!

Some unsolicited advice for this year's guys:

Rudy, Nick, and Paul--Boy bands are over.  Please get off my TV.

Brandon--Yum!  You can stay as long as you like, hon.

Sundance--Why, Sundance, why???  What were you thinking?  I like you a lot, but you better bring the blues next week or I'm going to have to let you go.

Chris R.--Lay off the helium.  Otherwise, that actually wasn't too bad.  You were really feeling it, and I like that. You have possibilities, but you need to stop with the head bobbing.

Blake--WOW....just WOW.  Who knew??  An excellent, confident performance of a really different, beautiful song.  Best performance of the night.

Sanjaya--Shhhhh, don't cry......it's okay, sweetie, Mommy's here.....

Chris S.--Another terrific perfomance of a good unknown song, but is it really wise to piss off Simon so early in the competition?  Hope you didn't just dig your own grave, because I think you're a really good singer.

Jarrod and A.J.--Not bad, not great.  You should both survive to see another week, but please choose better songs next time (see Blake and Chris S.)

Phil--Oh man.....that was just terrible.....but then suddenly it was fantastic!  What just happened??  I'm confused. 

Today could have been a bit stressful.  I locked my keys in my running van; forgot to put in my schedule request at work (again); had to drive way out of my way to pick up Chelsea at a friend's house; and tried--and mostly failed--to keep Logan from bouncing off the walls during an interminable two-hour wait at the dentist. 

Even so, I managed to stay fairly Zen through it all, thanks to some beautiful moments of grace:

The Triple AAA guy got my van unlocked in less than a minute, without making a scratch.   I told him, "Wow, that was fast!  I'm impressed."  He said, "I always say a prayer before I unlock a car.  I just imagine God's hand on top of mine.  Works every time."  Wow.  Then I was really impressed.

During that long drive out of my way, the kids and I listened to my new cd, and it was so good, and we were all tapping our feet and singing along, and I was reminded once again how huge music is for our family, how sometimes it keeps us and the kids traveling in the same orbit.  We all like the same things, turn each other on to new stuff, and go on music jags together.  We went through a James Blunt phase, then a Jonny Lang phase, lately it's been Chris Daughtry (#1 this week, go Chris!), and now the new guy is Paolo Nutini, a ridiculously talented 20-year-old Scottish kid who's going to be a big star.  (You heard it here first.  You should go to Amazon and buy it right now.)

Okay, there were no transcendent moments at the dentist, but I was in such a good music-fueled mood by then, it didn't really matter.  Even the lady shooting dirty looks at Logan as he rolled around on the waiting room floor didn't get to me.....much.

Currently Listening These Streets By Paolo Nutini see related

Morning Pages, revisited

Quite a while back, I borrowed Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way from the library.  I wanted to take it for a test run before I committed to doing the entire 12-week course.  I was really impressed and enthralled and returned it with every intention of buying my own copy, and then, as I so often do.......never got around to it.

I did try Morning Pages for a while though.  The idea is to write 3 pages of longhand stream-of-consciousness whatever-comes-to-mind, first thing in the morning, every single day.  Julia swears that this practice will unload all the mental dreck clogging up your brain, connect you to your divine Source of creativity, and free you to receive regular flashes of insight and inspiration.  I loved this idea!  I was totally jazzed to begin unlocking my creativity!  I bought a special notebook and purple pen, placed them on my bedside table, and kept up Morning Pages for, oh, I think maybe three whole days.  (My pages mainly consisted of me lamenting my complete and utter lack of any kind of self-discipline.)

Well,  today I decided to work with the energy of this month's powerful new moon to make some positive changes.  I finally bought my own copy of The Artist's Way and will commence Morning Pages again, tomorrow.  No special notebook or pen this time......I'm not even going to keep the pages.  I'm going to use sheets of looseleaf paper I have hanging around, fold them up, and stick them in a box on my altar.  Every new moon, I'm going to take them out, reread them, copy anything that might be a seed of an idea for later use, make note of any recurring issues, and then throw them away.

I have other self-improvement projects percolating, but for now I'll just do this one thing, and really give it a chance this time.

Currently Reading Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity By Julia Cameron see related

Let's Try This Again....

I'm going to give this blogging thing another shot.   I've spent the last few days reading over my old posts, trying to detect a pattern of my comings and goings, and I think I figured it out.  I come back here and blog every time I've reinvented myself--every time I'm in the grip of a new passion.  When I first joined, way back in 2001, I was a very gung-ho new homeschooler.  Also at that time I was a new disciple of Flylady.  I disappeared for a while, then came back after the birth of my fourth child, because I was new all over again to mothering an infant.  Then I got into progressive Christianity.  Then it was Tarot and Wicca.  Now I'm back, once again having chosen a new spiritual path.

Actually I've come full circle:  I'm back to progressive Christianity, only this time around I'm combining it with the elements of Wicca that are the most personally meaningful to me.  I've learned that calling myself a Christian Wiccan really doesn't fly in either Christian or Wiccan circles, so we could just say I'm a Wiccan-influenced Christian, or an earth-based Christian, or a witchy Christian, but I think "progressive" covers it well enough.  I've started to attend a Unity church, which is also a form of Christianity that needs a modifier.  Unity refers to it as practical Christianity, and it is, in the sense that the teachings are meant to be applied to everyday living.  But I think "metaphysical Christianity" is a more accurate term.  The Unity view of God is panenthestic (both immanent and transcendent), and Jesus is considered to be our "elder brother and way-shower"--the Master who taught us all how to realize the Christ within.  Heaven, hell, and sin are states of mind; the Kingdom of God is right here, right now.  There is only one thing going on at all times--God, expressing as us.

I really don't know how I've never heard of Unity until now, since this is all stuff that I already believed, for years!  I mean, I read Marianne Williamson's book A Return to Love 15 years ago.  That's the book that changed my life, and set me on the spiritual path to begin with.  It's based on A Course in Miracles, which many Unity churches teach.  The only explanation I can come up with is that I was meant to take the long way around....taking the "scenic route" is an ongoing theme in my life.  I was meant to come to Unity by way of Catholicism, atheism, Unitarian Universalism and Wicca, because I was meant to learn from those traditions and to discern what to incorporate into my path and what to let go.  Unity believes that people show up in their churches when they're ready to absorb the teachings, and not a minute before. 

Will I stay in Unity?  Who knows?  If there's one thing I've learned about myself it's that as soon as I declare myself to be "this" or "that", I begin to chafe against the label.  Perhaps I should dispense with the labels and just take my journey one day and one step at a time.

Currently Reading Discover the Power Within You: A Guide to the Unexplored Depths Within By Eric Butterworth see related

I'm on my way to Florida in the morning, for a girls-only retreat at my mom's motel in Port St. Joe.  She's flying me and Chelsea down for five days, no boys allowed!  That means five glorious days with no Logan.

Am I the world's worst mother because I've been counting the minutes until I can be free of my adorable four-year-old son?  My husband thinks so.  (Don't you, babe?)

Well, I don't care.  And if that's not an indication of how badly I need this trip for my continued mental health, then I don't know what is.

This is a computer-free retreat, so I'll be back next Saturday with a full report.