This Wonderful Cosmic Ride

/ James Browning

beautiful

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When… a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And, so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
“To Bless the Space Between Us”
by John O’Donohue

My life is good beyond what I could have ever imagined it might be. It’s not easy. Challenges often come. What is different now than earlier in my life is I don’t expect a trouble-free existence. Difficulty is just part of this wonderful cosmic ride called living. I am grateful to realize that… so very grateful.

My philosophy is:
Life is hard, but God is good.
Try not to confuse the two.
Anne F. Beiler

Thanks…

/ James Browning

thank-you-quotes-show-gratitude

 You simply will not be the same person
two months from now after consciously
giving thanks each day for the abundance
that exists in your life.
And you will have set in motion
an ancient spiritual law:
the more you have and are grateful for,
the more will be given you.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

Finally Found It

/ James Browning

Words-to-live-by1I am responsible for the growth
and maintenance of mindfulness in my own life.
Each day is an opportunity for me to
discover deeper truths about myself.
Every moment is an invitation for me
to grant others the space they need to be themselves.
Within me exists a world of awe and splendor,
and every morning is a reminder of
my innate obligation to participate in my own majesty.
This life is my inheritance as a human being
and I will claim it by living as fully as I possibly can
through mindful and compassionate participation.
May any reward I receive be recycled
through my service to others.
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A simple statement; a prayer sent into the universe at the start of the day. I am grateful to be alive and humbly thankful to be the happiest I have ever been.

Every journey has its own traveler. Every dream has its own dreamer. We are all belonged to a specific journey and dream. Some people are currently looking for it, some people are just figuring it out, some people are still lost, and to some they have finally found it. Happy Positivity

Perspective Is Your Choice

/ James Browning

Woman Standing by a Deathbed null by Sir David Wilkie 1785-1841

Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, who worked exclusively with the terminally ill wrote a book titled “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing Regrets of the Dying”. For many years she was with patients during the last three to twelve weeks of their life and from her experiences came a list of the regrets people make most frequently on their deathbed:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

In the article Ms. Ware was especially emphatic about most not realizing that happiness is a choice until it was almost too late. Fear of change was the number one reason patients cited for pretending to themselves and others they were happy. At the same time most secretly longed to laugh more and better and to simply have more silliness in their life.

With gratitude for the chance encounter with Ms. Ware’s article (thank you to my friend Katie for bringing it to my attention), I commit to laugh easier and be silly more often. With that in mind, the rest of the week is going to be a lot more fun that the first half (and it was pretty darn good!).

The same view you look at every day,
the same life, can become something brand new
by focusing on its gifts rather than the negative aspects.
Perspective is your own choice and the best way to shift
that perspective is through gratitude, by acknowledging
and appreciating the positives.
Bronnie Ware

Not Today

/ James Browning

Beautiful-morning

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. Oprah Winfrey

Selling an old sofa on Craig’s list and delivering it yesterday brought an unexpected abundance of gratitude. The buyer was nice young single parent in her early 20’s. She and her two-year old lived in the “projects” with very little in their apartment. It was the simple fact that she was cheerful about her life while lacking much in comforts of home that touched me. I have been richly blessed and sometimes take it for granted, but not today.

It’s funny how, in this journey of life,
even though we may begin at different times
and places, our paths cross with others
so that we may share our love, compassion,
observations, and hope.
This is a design of God that
I appreciate and cherish.
Steve Maraboli

You Gotta Dance

/ James Browning

b 02

Dear Human:
You’ve got it all wrong.
You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.
That is where you came from and where you’ll return.
You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty love.
Crazy love. Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up.
Often.
You didn’t come here to be perfect.
You already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human.
Flawed and fabulous.
And then to rise again into remembering.
But unconditional love?
Stop telling that story.
Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives.
It doesn’t require modifiers.
It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.
It only asks that you show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt
and heal and fall and get back up and play
and work and live and die as YOU.
It’s enough.
It’s Plenty.
found on-line credited to no source in specific

Mondays often begin unevenly and filled with whirling quandaries. Where am I? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? What’s my purpose? Who am I? Why? What is going to happen?

All good questions and it’s in living such questions, and not always expecting answers, that life is best found. Life is its own answer. It’s wonderful. It’s damn difficult. Life can make you fly high. Sometimes it will break you. Inside out and from top to bottom, living is a wonderful thing, even when it’s not easy… even when it’s another Monday. I am grateful to be here.

You’ve gotta dance
like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey

Better To Have Lived in Truth

/ James Browning

the-self-made-man-sculpture-near-cato-hall-jan-11-2007-257-pm

There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind – graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last – and yet will remain with you for life.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another. Jim Butcher

I regret the times I damned my pain or prayed for it to be gone. At that moment I did not realize I was being sculpted by discomfort into a better and wiser man. In hindsight that sort of growth reminds me of being an adolescent boy when I woke with my legs hurting so much from growing overnight that they could barely support me. But once I walked for a few minutes, the aches subsided quickly. I was simply growing.

And so I have gratefully begun to better accept the outcome of pain, although the bearing of it will never be something positively anticipated. It is through allowing grief, sorry and anguish to do their work that I become wiser and through that  wisdom, grow more content. First posted here on October 14, 2003  

We never know when our last day on earth will be.
So, love with full sincerity, believe with true faith,
and hope with all of your might.
Better to have lived in truth and discovered life,
than to have lived half heartedly
and died long before you ever ceased breathing.
Cristina Marrero

 

A Walk To Remember

/ James Browning

Jamie-Landon-A-Walk-to-Remember-nicholas-sparks-novels-and-movies-11160610-512-372

Writer and film producer Nicholas lost his sister to cancer and events in her life inspired him to write “A Walk To Remember”. The book was made into a movie I have not seen. However, the book touched this old hapless romantic’s heart.

“Do you love me?’ I asked her. She smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to be happy?’ as I asked her this I felt my heart beginning to race. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Will you do something for me then?’ She looked away, sadness crossing her features. ‘I don’t know if I can anymore.’ she said. ‘but if you could, would you?’

I cannot adequately describe the intensity of what I was feeling at that moment. Love, anger, sadness, hope, and fear, whirling together sharpened by the nervousness I was feeling. Jamie looked at me curiously and my breaths became shallower. Suddenly I knew that I’d never felt as strongly for another person as I did at that moment.

As I returned her gaze, this simple realization made me wish for the millionth time that I could make all this go away. Had it been possible, I would have traded my life for hers. I wanted to tell her my thoughts, but the sound of her voice suddenly silenced the emotions inside me.

‘Yes’ she finally said, her voice weak yet somehow still full of promise. ‘I would.’

Finally getting control of myself I kissed her again, then brought my hand to her face, gently running my fingers over her cheek. I marveled at the softness of her skin, the gentleness I saw in her eyes. even now she was perfect. My throat began to tighten again, but as I said, I knew what I had to do.

Since I had to accept that it was not within my power to cure her, what I wanted to do was give her something that she’d wanted. It was what my heart had been telling me to do all along. Jamie, I understood then, had already given me the answer I’d been searching for, the answer my heart needed to find.

She’d told me outside Mr. Jenkins office, the night we’d asked him about doing the play. I smiled softly, and she returned my affection with a slight squeeze of my hand, as if trusting me in what I was about to do.

Encouraged, I leaned closer and took a deep breath. When I exhaled, these were the words that flowed with my breath. ‘Will you marry me?” From “A Walk To Remember” by Nicholas Sparks

For a soul that is open enough to accept big love; for a heart that is strong enough to love with every fiber; and a mind that can get out of the way and let love soar… I am deeply grateful.

Love is like the wind,
you can’t see it
but you can feel it.
Nicholas Sparks

Whatever Life Throws At You

/ James Browning

A-Beautiful-World-sesshyswind-26642741-1920-1200

This is what you don’t do.
Don’t let this world make you bitter.
Don’t let the actions of other people turn you cold on the inside.
Certain things happen that hurt us, people come that leave us,
and most of all there are moments when you’re bound to fall.
Don’t let those things make you unkind.
It’s okay to cry.
It’s okay to be sad.
But it’s never okay to do other people wrong
just because you were done wrong.
We’re human.
We break.
We make mistakes.
But don’t let pain and sadness run your lives.
Wake up in the morning and do what you think is right.
There are moments in your life where you feel like giving up
and you can’t take it anymore.
It’s okay.
Breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I know you’re weak.
But the things that show your weak side
are also the same ones that make you stronger in the long run.
It’s all about taking whatever life throws at you and learning from it.
https://www.facebook.com/joyofmom

Today is just an ordinary day; a good day. I am feeling a little melancholy because my son who came to visit for several days went home yesterday. The woman I love and live with is at work, so it’s just me and Fred, the dog, at home. I rested well last night and got more sleep that usual (helped me catch up from going all weekend). But I was dragging a little.

There is much serendipity in life if one’s aware enough to notice. I needed a little pick-me-up… just a small one and found it in the joyofmom post above this morning. Thanks “Mom” I needed that.

Be soft.
Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride that even though the rest of the world
may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pleasefindthis

Teaching Me How

/ James Browning

father-son-460_1238439c

There are few things like watching a child grow up to remind one of how fast time marches by. My “boy” is in his early 30’s now and it seems like only a few years ago he was eight and playing street hockey in the driveway.

Although my son is still finding his compass, I am very proud of his free-thinking ways and determination to live his life his own way. He pays his own bills, is in a meaningful long-term relationship and is loved by family and friends. To stay in school and be nearly done with a PhD has taken determination I don’t have. Way to go Nick!

During a visit this past weekend my son and I talked about how dreams thought up behind us, look very different in the present. We agreed that it is far to easy to get down because things did not turn out the way we once hoped. Coming to believe that is okay was something we saw eye to eye on.

The simplistic idealism of being 21 is a marvel to see in one’s son. Even more impressive is when a child has grown fully into an adult with a much broader perspective. The only thing that concerns me sometimes is his (and his generation’s) cynicism about the future. Once in a while I wish he had a little more of the idealism of a decade ago.

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! From “White Nights: And Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am grateful that I grew up with my son to be a pretty decent Dad. I made plenty of mistakes, but did a good bit well also. I know today I am a better Father than ever before. I thank my son for teaching me how.

I believe that what we become
depends on what our fathers
teach us at odd moments,
when they aren’t trying to teach us.
We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco