New Year's Revolution

Will you make a New Year’s revolution this week? I think they are better called revolutions than resolutions. To resolve sounds so rigid, so staid and stiff like a stick, “I resolve!”

But a revolution means turning. We turn things around, we turn things away, we turn things over. Yes we do, we turn them over again and again. That is our Third Step: “Made a decision to turn…”

So for 2014: What will you turn toward this year? And what will you turn away from?

My list includes turning toward: more fresh foods, more whole foods, more conscious eating, more God in my life, more yoga and meditation, more walking---especially the fast kind that makes me joyful and aerobic, more dance, more water, more art, more time with recovery friends, more quiet at home, more writing life, more teaching, more spiritual direction, and….

And I want to turn away from: fear, old schemas, shopping as a distraction, internet and social media, long to-do lists, sugar, scaring myself, judging others, interrupting my creative work, gossip, fear—yeah most of what I want to turn away from is based in fear ….

So maybe my revolution this year is about more faith and less fear, turning toward God and away from fear.

So will you start a revolution this year? What will youl turn away from? And what will you turn toward?

Unchain My Heart

 The idea that our perceptions determine the reality that we perceive is quite old. In the classic story, known as "Plato's Cave", Socrates describes how a group of men who are chained facing a wall observe shadows dancing across the wall in front of them. They have never known that these shadows are projected on the wall from figures near the entrance to the cave that are moving behind them in front of a candle. To the men chained in the cave, the shadows are reality.

One day one of the men turns around and sees that there are figures moving behind him casting their shadows across the wall. From that day on, the "reality" of the shadows no

longer exists.

Changing my thinking; challenging it, testing it--is my attempt to unchain myself and to see the reality of what is outside the small cave of my mind. I have believed the shadows on my “wall” all of my life. I have made decisions about people and situations, about work and especially about love based on what I saw in the shadows. Now I want to know what’s real.

If my thinking and perceptions can change I can slowly unchain my heart.