bloom21Dear God,

So here we are. 2010.  A brand new year.  I had planned to do a final blog entry for 2009 – for closure’s sake even though I abandoned my daily letter to you in September – but my good intentions were to no avail.  December 31 turned out to be too busy for writing.  I began yesterday with a 6:30am arrival at Sarasota Memorial Hospital for an 8:30am – turned into 9:45am — surgery to repair a ventral hernia.  Thankfully, I did get released from the hospital – albeit with a drain attached – so I was home for New Year’s Eve.  However, even that found me zonked out in bed by 10:30pm on pain meds.  I am thankful to have my wonderful April and Jared with me to help.

Over the years, the typical New Year’s Day has often found me with a long list of “to do’s” and lots of resolve to perfect myself.  This first day of 2010 finds me less determined and less resolved.  I am, however, finding myself willing to practice patience and acceptance.  After all, what choice do I have when it takes all my energy to get up and down and to simply walk slowly around the house?  But this slow beginning does remind me that every journey begins with a single step and although I can’t do it all today or even tomorrow, I can take one step at a time which will ultimately get me to where I want to go.

Grandiosity has often been my downfall. I have big dreams of things I want to accomplish but because I demand perfection, I fail to reach my goals.  Acceptance really is the key to all my problems today and every day.  Spiritual progress is attainable and when I can accept progress and abandon perfection, life flows and the happiness I seek magically – so it seems – finds me.

Last night I watched the movie, “Amadeus” – a story told in flashback by the character Antonio Salieri.  Salieri was a man who longed to express You, God in his music and prayed for You to use him for Your purpose via his love of music.  Then he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and found him to be a repulsive, vulgar man who was such a musical genius that Salieri recognized such a gift could only come directly from You, God.  However, Salieri was so angry that You would put such amazing talent and beauty in such a vulgar man that he turned away from You and became an evil man out of his spite and jealousy.

I was reminded — as You so often remind me and show me – that You, God do not require us to suffer in order to find You, that You do not require “good behavior” in order to know Your Presence, that You are simply with us always and all that is required is a willingness to allow You in our lives and a surrender of the “little self” for the True Self.  Mozart might not have been a “religious” man such as Salieri but he was clearly the more spiritual man, the man who knew how to recognize and follow Your voice that You placed inside of him.  I believe You place Your voice inside each one of us and that our responsibility is to find and express You in the way that You created each of us to do so.  I can never find my one True Voice if I allow others to dictate to me how Your voice lives in me.

So, my task is clear – not easy – but clear.  2010 one day at a time I will seek to discover and express Your Voice inside of me and share whatever I find with the world in which I live.  It is not necessary to turn my life upside down but, it is necessary to bloom where I am planted.