Hard Work or Effort?

“If you work hard,” my Daddy said...well, I can't really remember what went on the end of the sentence, except maybe it had to do with glorifying God. But I do remember the 'work hard' part. In word and action, I was schooled in the art of working hard. But all I remember as a result of that schooling is disheartened exhaustion.



And then there is effort. I seem to remember the phrase, “give it your best effort.” And the picture that remains around that saying is one of excitement and joy sometimes, but satisfaction almost always.



Hard work and effort are two different things. Hard work is initiated by the subconscious mind, mired in a pardigm that isn't very effective and executed by the body, whether or not adequate respite from the prior exhausting task is complete.



Effort is the activity of the creative conscious mind, a focus on the desire or goal that has given inspiration. A holding of that goal securely, protecting it from diluting influence. It is choosing, and choosing firmly and fully, sometimes over and over again. It may not seem easy, but it is not hard in the way of 'hard work.'



I used to be proud that nobody could work harder than I. Now, as I turn my attention to the effort of my mind, which gives birth to positive emotion and inspired action, I believe that my pride was misplaced.

A Different Form

I love words. Frequently they press themselves on me, demanding my attention. So it was no surprise when the word anew came leaping to my mind repeatedly this past week, clamoring for consideration.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to me. Even the physical world around me spoke the word. Yesterday, I woke to find a thin blanket of snow covering all but the warmest spots, and everything looked new. Untidiness was covered and clutter was blurred. Dead leaves and hibernating grass, which had been none too attractive, were hidden. It looked beautiful. It looked new.

Even the season is proclaiming newness. The solstice has opened us to light and vitality, the holiday season has turned our activities festive, and the New Year is only days away.

But while things may seem different on the surface, a nagging suspicion remains, that all the problems that have accrued, all the lacks that remain, all the unfulfilled hopes that languish...none of them have been transformed by the season.

We are taught that change is a constant. If it is always with us, what are our options with regard to it? We can fear it or embrace it, direct it or fall victim to it's whims, find the treasure in it or bemoan it's arrival, aching for what is familiar (even if not very satisfying) to return.

Here's where my word 'anew' come in. Anew means in a new or different form. Evidently the stuff of which my experience is made is the same stuff, however it works out for me. But that same stuff can take a different form. It can make my life anew...or not.

From where I sit, I have come to know that I am co-creator of my experience of life. The thoughts that I disallow, the emotions that I refuse to entertain, the company that I avoid, these are probably old forms for me, and ones that haven't produced what I have wanted to create in my life.

But those thoughts that I enthusiastically and repeatedly choose, those emotions that feel really good to me, that I seek and bask in, and the company of like minded people, whose dreams run parallel to mine, these create a new life for me, obliterating the untidiness, and making an opening for the clutter to be removed.

Here are cues to life anew for me, life in a new and different (and exhilarating) form.

Sharing Awareness

The thought came to me several years ago. It enveloped me like the warmth of a never-to-be-extinguished fire that lights and warms without end. I suddenly knew what my purpose was. I was meant to share the world as it was given me to see.

Since that time, the world has opened to me greatly. And I have taken steps to share that world, freely, and as clearly as I am able. As I become aware, I share.. This is somewhat new for me. My personal history was one of holding back, not sharing, perhaps because that gave me some advantage, perhaps because I thought that in my reservation I was conserving something for myself that I might not otherwise have.

Last night I set my alarm and got up to watch the total lunar eclipse. It was really quite a spectacular sight. Better than anything on TV. And because the eclipse proceeded at quite a modest pace, I intermittently sat at the computer and researched lunar eclipses. There I ran into an interesting story.

It seems that our American hero, Christopher Columbus, knew a thing or two about lunar eclipses, and it either got him out of trouble or into a bigger cosmic quagmire...you decide. On one of his later voyages, he and his crew were stranded in Jamaica. Not a bad place to be stranded if you can enjoy the comfort of a luxury hotel, but that was not the case for Chris.

He and his band were without provisions, in danger of starvation without some assistance. Happily, the indigenous people were hospitable, and provided them with food, which, of course the natives knew how to grow and gather. After some time, a few of Chris's crew spoiled things by stealing from the natives, who after the affront withdrew their hospitality. Can't blame them.

In dire straights, Chris turned to the reading of his almanac, probably one of the few books he had, and discovered that a total lunar eclipse was immanent. So he used that awareness to his benefit. He counseled the then inhospitable natives that their move to withhold food from him and his crew had angered the gods. So much so, that the very heavens were about to show their displeasure. The moon would turn red, the prelude to a pouring out of the wrath of the gods. The community would be destroyed.

Well, the moon did turn red, and the natives repented of their decision to starve Chris and company. They pledged to resume their support. And Chris subsequently reported that they would be forgiven. The rage of the heavens subsided and the moon again lighted the night sky as it always had. Smart Chris. Or was he?

Chris was aware of celestial events and he hoarded that awareness, using it to his own advantage. In the end, his exile ended and he became our hero. Let us not detail the genocide that he perpetrated on indigenous Carribean people.

But what do you think the story might read like if he had shared the awareness that he had? Would he have been believed or disbelieved? Would he have found an ongoing cooperative way of living with those whose island he shared? Might he have learned something from them? We will never know, but the story would surely have been different.

I don't like the way the story ended at all. I choose not to emulate the example of Christopher Columbus. I think I will just share the world as it is given me to see and know, trusting that a path will open, and that a new and greater experience of being will show up.

Expecting...

Do you remember when the socially correct way to talk about pregnancy was to say... “she's expecting?” Well, that may have been an attempt to sanitize for children (and other impressionable people) an event that was awkward to talk about. But I think that the language carried something very positive along with it.

Mary of Nazareth was 'expecting' as she traveled to Bethlehem, and as the story goes, soon along side her appeared a supportive husband as well as expectant shepherds, wise men, oxes and asses.

I remember the Christmases of my childhood as being times of great expectancy. There were the letters to Santa, of course, and the Christmas caroling where we carried painstakingly decorated Christmas cookies nested in cupcake papers and packed in tops from emptied greeting card boxes to shut ins and others whose anticipation of the season might have been slightly less than ours. There was skating on the long placid, compliantly frozen river from one town to the next, and sledding down the steep hill at the edge of town until we shushed out onto a vacant Main Street and coasted forever.

Even if the stockings on Christmas morning were meagerly filled, or the presents were modest; even if they got lost in the snow storm of wrapping paper, my expectancy, wrapped in that of family and friends around me prevailed, and made each Christmas better than the one before.

In all of this there was one consistent theme. I approached every facet of the holiday with great anticipation. And!!! All of those around me did the same. We coaxed the season into brilliance, stoked the excitement whenever it might seem to lag, and we did it together. In all of that, I never remember a disappointing Christmas.

Makes me wonder what life would be like if we did that all the time. What if we really expected that our life would measure up to our dreams? What if we were willing to dream at length and in detail, contravening the appearance in our life of situations that didn't live up to the dream? What if we surrounded ourselves with those who were willing to dream with us? What if expectancy saturated us?

Why...maybe we would get what we were expecting...

Reclaiming What Got Frittered Away

Sunday School was a solid fixture of my childhood years. That, and Vacation Bible School, which was rather like Sunday School all day, five days a week, except a little bit more fun and I didn't have to wear my Sunday clothes.

One of the ingredients in the mix of Sunday School/VBS was singing, usually to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano and an inexpert pianist. We sang what we called 'choruses' or what might better be described as 'hymns-lite,' a slightly dummed down version of theology set to music. That was really the best part of Sunday School, because we did it together in a larger group before we got down to the poorly planned, but age specific curriculum of the classes.

We sang those choruses over and over again, and the words ring soundly, and usually error free in my head to this day. I think my belief system was partially founded on those choruses.

One came to mind this morning, and it resonated with a truth that is welling up in me these several decades later. That truth, back then, was ameliorated and tailored to suit the prevailing belief that was being inculcated. You might even say it was frittered away. But it has remained with me, and today I'm reclaiming it, re-translating it and consciously restoring it's truth to my active belief system. Here's how it goes:

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

The wealth in every mine.

He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills,

The sun and stars that shine.

Wonderful riches more than tongue can tell.

These are my Father's, so they're mine as well.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know that He will care for me.

Sadly, the core truth of that little ditty was lost to me almost immediately. Instead of a great abundance being available to me, I was taught that it was not right to really expect an overflow of goodness, but that it was better to anticipate little. In fact it was really rather righteous to be poor. The rich were somehow suspect, however giving they might seem to be. All this I learned in the face of my much loved chorus.

So, today I am reclaiming the chorus and translating it so that I may access it, and use it as a keystone in the ongoing rebuilding of my belief system. Here goes. (sorry I can't make it a rhyming ditty)

The Universe...amazing!

Utterly complex, no end in sight.

Constantly made of limitless thinking stuff.

I'm an integral part of it...

It is mine and I am it's,

Never are we separated.

With rocks and rivers

moon and stars and cosmos

I am unseverably connected.

Never can I doubt...is there is enough?

Never will I be abandoned or without

water from the well of infinite goodness.

I'm not sure I can sing my translation, but I'm taking it to heart.

What is Truth?

I'm not sure who asked the question first, but it must have been asked a trillion times, from the beginning of time. What is truth? There might have been a time that I would have gone to the bookshelf in search of philosophical tomes or theological treatises to find the answer. Often I have looked far and wide for answers, thinking that one exploration or another special experience might be what I was looking for. But, no...none of these have worked for me.

Many years ago, the glib conversational response, “this is true,” was heard over and over again, popping up frequently in inconsequential conversation. Yes, it was a clique, usually offered when no more articulate response might be found. But I believe it pointed to something important. Truth is not outside of me, to be found as the prize result of a far ranging quest, it is here, it is now, it is with me, and often more readily recognizable than I think.

In short, I uncover truth when I become aware of what resonates with the genuine me, the open me, the the conscious me.

This does not mean that I am making it up on the fly. For sure, my truth is informed by Universal Law, by truth principle, by beliefs that I have chosen. These are critical, for they give me a framework on which to hang my truth. But as well built as that framework may be, by itself it is not my truth. It evidences my truth. It is home for my truth. My truth emerges from me in resonance with that framework.

Wow! This means that everybody else's truth is not the same as mine. It means that today's truth and tomorrow's may look a bit different. It indicates that truth flexes to meet the world. All this is resonance with me.

Makes me feel a bit more important. A bit more knowing. And quite a bit more responsible. I guess you could say it causes me to be aware.

Your Trial Has Expired - Part I

I jabbed my computer to 'on' just shortly after my feet hit the floor this morning...then off to the bathroom, and on to the kitchen to put water on for chai. When I returned to my desk, the monitor displayed a familiar message. “Your trial has expired,' it whispered to me insistently. And so began a morning rumination on those four words.

My first thoughts featured me as the one on trial. I saw my dalliances with existence as trials...not the hard-to-bear kind, but the let's-see-how-this-works kind. And those dalliances have gone on for what seems like forever; I have been living a series of experiments with being. They have been just that...experiments. I have tried this, attempted that, tinkered with other things. My approach has been sometimes interesting, often frustrating, and sometimes just boring.

So, my trial has expired, huh? Well, I guess I could expire as well...or...I might just get down to the real thing. I might really live, truly know, actually be.

I think it is time to be. My trial has expired.