What does Resurrection really mean?

I taped a The Best of Oprah Show with Marianne Williamson.  It sat in my DVR for a while.  And then something pushed me to watch it.  I was about to delete and bam - out comes mention of resurrection.

Whaaaaat?

Marianne Williamson - new age spiritual guru mentions resurrection?  (My idea of who she is does not fit in with this but....I am wrong!)

And yet this is the BEST kind of resurrection I have heard of!

My religious baggage makes me so uncomfortable about "Jesus" talk or what I would call old school bible teachings.  This would include talk of blood, sin, calvary, Armageddon, the devil, to name just a few topics off the top of my head.  In this type of Bible teaching,  I heard judgement, judgement, judgement.  I have been judging myself unmercifully for forty-five years, I do not need any more talk of telling me what is wrong with myself.  I need to hear what is right.  I need to hear that God made me perfect as I am.  And that is the divine within.  Recognizing the divine within, the gig is up, it is all about LOVE.

ALL ABOUT LOVE!

Yes, I was screaming that.

Now back to Marianne on my DVR, she is saying a lot that is making so much sense but then I catch this little bit that blows me away:  "The meaning of the word resurrection is the mind lifting up into a new kind of thinking."  She speaks of the Grace of God and that grace allowing us to switch from the victim modality, "this is so terrible" (and for me, I'll never get over this, whatever this is) to one of healing ourselves.   Changing the track that our brain and mind usually play out.

A new kind of thinking.

Yes, she's talking about mindfulness. My favorite subject.  {smile}

Jesus wasn't trying to judge us.  He was trying to show us how to love.  Love ourselves and each other.  During the process of learning to love myself, I just naturally love others in the process, even those who drive me crazy.   When you feel that spark of divine within, you are drawn to give it away.

Somehow I listened to that little intuition that I needed to watch that show.  I needed to hear this.  This idea of resurrection changes not just the track of my brain but it confirms the changes that I'm made in the track of my life.  It reconfirms so many lessons.  So many different people from different walks of life but saying the same idea, in different language, in different ways.

Namaste!

My Inner Frankie Heck Is Taken Over By My Inner Theatre Goddess...And In the End It's All About Soul

This morning, I felt myself channeling my inner Frankie Heck, the barely getting by mom from "The Middle."  We have been on a Middle marathon and I have absorbed the essential quirks of each character.  I now repeat things to myself dropping my chin to my chest and whispering words a la Brick.  And then laugh hilariously at myself.  That laughter feels so good because I have not acclimated to this crazy school year.

Back to Frankie.  Two days ago, Mallory's velcro tennis shoe strap broke.  Her father, the surgeon sewed it and then the next day it broke again.  We lucked out because she had free dress at school the following day.  She wore her brand new mandatory dress leather shoes.  I was informed by her teacher that the leather strap had broken off these shoes during the day as well.  As Mallory has play practice every day after school there is no time for shoe shopping and she has no other shoes to wear to school, at all.  

So, this morning we are driving to school.  George had permanently sewed the strap to the other side as the velcro piece is now missing.  I implored Mallory that these shoes have to last through school today and then... One More Day until we can go shopping Saturday morning.  At that moment, my inner theater goddess rose above my inner Frankie Heck, and the Les Mis song, "One Day More" popped in my head.  

So I HAD to play it for the girls and of course, it's on the hard drive in my car.  It goes like this... You MUST push the Play button to read the rest.

The girls are now mortified when I began singing in the car.  And that makes me want to sing louder.  They now implore me to turn it down before the car doors are opened in carpool.  I say, "You're welcome because the song will be stuck  in your head the rest of the day."

They depart and I drive through the rest of the campus and turn it on full blast.  I open the windows because it is a fabulously crisp morning.  I sing all the short way home (or at least the words I know because it's a lot of dialogue.)  {smile}  There is something about Les Miserables.   I've seen the show many times, ranging from a Toronto production to The Dunham School to the movie theatre screening of the 25th Anniversary Production in London.  

Who knew a story about prison, prostitutes, and war set in 19th century France could have such an impact on me.  Yet, the meaning of the story is all about God's love for people on the fringe.  

Here is author Victor Hugo's summation of his own book:

The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details ... a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.

And in the end, it's all about the light and the dark, (LOVE) and God within our soul.

Ahh, I guess that's why I was drawn to it.  





This is Bonus video above.  It's the 25th Anniversary of Les Mis in London.  The first singer is Colm Wilkinson and he originated Jean Valjean in London.  I dug in my playbills to see that I saw him perform as Phantom in Toronto.   His voice stayed with me!  He sings simple exquisitely.  Every time I watch this I get chills and depending on my mood, a few tears. It's just perfection.  In the 2012 Les Miserables movie, he plays the Bishop who takes Jean Valjean in.

Letting Go of Victimhood

When faced with something that brings up discomfort inside of them, most people spend their energy on reacting, blaming, fixing or running away. But this never heals anything in the long run. It is a gigantic leap in your awakening when you realize that your suffering does not come from what is happening in your life. Suffering comes from your stories about what is happening. People who have gone through great suffering and emerged empowered did so because they were able to see through the stories of victimhood and instead showed up for what Life was giving them.
~ Mary O'Malley

Once more Mary strikes again.  Love this!  I have experienced this.  I believe this.

Sara Bareilles: Brave

This song is so good it makes me want to cry.  I love the words and I love the music!  It makes me think of Brene Brown too!

My Lesson On Anger from "Pretty Woman"

There's a scene in "Pretty Woman" where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are in the bathtub and she has her legs wrapped around him.  He says the line that he spent ten thousand dollars in therapy to be able to say and that was "I was very angry at my father."

I took note of that line back in 1990 when the movie came out and it has stuck with me ever since. It would come up whenever I got angry at anyone or anything.  And I would spend many seconds emphasizing the word angry.  It would go like this. " I was very ANNNNGGGGRY."   In the last fews days, I was very ANGRY at someone.  And the anger turned to tears and I had a couple of sessions of ugly cries and then anger and back and forth over the last few days.  I really understand why people stick with their compulsions because the journey to heal is not for wussies.

But an aha has been coming about my anger.  I never really owned it.  Sure, I would rant and rave over the injustice of whoever or whatever it was but deep down...

I didn't think I deserved to be angry.

It was a mental mind game.  But I did deserve to be angry, I just had to detangle from the stories I have told myself that I am not worthy.   And separate and get some clarity from other people's stories that involved me.

As I'm allowing these feelings to work through, I pick up "The Artist's Way" (written by Julia Cameron) which is the workshop I'm taking this semester at church.  This is Chapter 3 which was my designated chapter to read this week.

Picking up this book and this chapter to read was God's hug for me.  I needed one and he gave it to me in this form and I'm grateful.

What stands out are the words....of the ENTIRE three paragraphs above.  I'm a people pleasing "nice" person, so I stuffed my anger, denied it, buried, blocked and hid it, etc.  But anger is there to show me my boundaries.  Again and again, it shows me my boundaries.

The last paragraph on anger:
"Sloth, apathy and despair are the enemy.  Anger is not.  Anger is our friend.  Not a nice friend.  Not a gentle friend.  But a very, very loyal friend.  It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves.  It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests.     Anger is not the action itself.  It is action's invitation."

There is a reason that the line from a movie in 1990 stuck with me.  Anger is my friend and I am worthy to listen to it and use it appropriately.