I read something today that gave me an awful initial reaction. Then as I read on, it made me feel, sort of glad. God is watching over this person and this person seems to be truly happy. I guess when I thought about it, my anger, if you can even call it that, subsided, and I felt genuinely happy for this person. It's been hard and I didn't think I could feel that even though I always tried to convince myself. But, today...today was the first time I actually felt it genuinely. It's pretty amazing.
Anyway, I hung out with a friend and had dinner with another friend today before going to a Going Away party for another friend. Yea, my schedule was pretty darn packed. But anyway, my friend said to me, "Tracy, you need to learn to be selfish for once." I never thought I would ever have to learn how to be selfish. I thought I was selfish but I guess it wasn't enough.
I watched the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy today and at the last scene.. Bailey said something like I can't care anymore. I don't want to care anymore because it hurts too much. I think I understand exactly what she's talking about, and I guess in a way, this has confirmed what I thought about these past couple of days.
I think I'm gonna take the choir director job. I feel like God's really pushing me towards that direction even though I have a million worries about it.
Wow, I haven't felt this exhausted in a really long time. I had a great day though. I did most of everything I planned on doing except for one thing. I hope the flowers are okay since I can't visit until Saturday. =\ She's very cute though. The other day I came in, and I guess the nurse fed her food, and she was sleeping with food all over her mouth. There was a bit of snoring which I thought was super funny. I don't think she likes to have her face cleaned with a wet paper towel. That's all they had there. I'll need to remember to bring a towel next time. She's a dear friend even though we can't understand each other. Sometimes language barriers are a blessing. There are many different ways to communicate anyway. -_^
Alrighty, I'm off to bed and ready for a new day!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A new opportunity
So yesterday, an old friend of mine called me and told me about a job opportunity. He said that there's a new priest at his church and they're looking for a choir director. It would be a paid position. O_O
I'm really praying hard about this because there are so many factors I need to take into consideration. Mass would be at 5 every Saturday and I would get paid for the hours that I spend rehearsing, choosing songs, directing mass, etc.
It feels like God wants me to take it, even though I still have sort of a commitment to Interfaith. We all have to move on someday and I feel like because some of us have stayed for so long, we need a "Love" offering more than others. We, as in those people, or actually just one person. People who have devoted so much time and energy towards music ministry deserve some kind of reward. Especially during this time when everyone seems to be in a financial rut.
Anyway, I'm thinking about the possibility of going away to school next Fall, and I feel like God wants me to take this job so that I can come home every weekend to visit my family too. It makes a lot of sense to me.
The problem is, can I commit? Will I burn out from working another job (hopefully), volunteering, and choir directing? There's probably a higher expectation for me because I'm getting paid to do the job.
You know what they say...be careful what you ask for...because you might just have it all. =\ I wanted to be busy, and now I feel like the business is coming.
I'm going to continue praying about this. I have to give my answer by the end of the week. Yikes!!!
I'm really praying hard about this because there are so many factors I need to take into consideration. Mass would be at 5 every Saturday and I would get paid for the hours that I spend rehearsing, choosing songs, directing mass, etc.
It feels like God wants me to take it, even though I still have sort of a commitment to Interfaith. We all have to move on someday and I feel like because some of us have stayed for so long, we need a "Love" offering more than others. We, as in those people, or actually just one person. People who have devoted so much time and energy towards music ministry deserve some kind of reward. Especially during this time when everyone seems to be in a financial rut.
Anyway, I'm thinking about the possibility of going away to school next Fall, and I feel like God wants me to take this job so that I can come home every weekend to visit my family too. It makes a lot of sense to me.
The problem is, can I commit? Will I burn out from working another job (hopefully), volunteering, and choir directing? There's probably a higher expectation for me because I'm getting paid to do the job.
You know what they say...be careful what you ask for...because you might just have it all. =\ I wanted to be busy, and now I feel like the business is coming.
I'm going to continue praying about this. I have to give my answer by the end of the week. Yikes!!!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Fearless
I wish I was fearless.
In my creative mind, there is a future too.
Many have asked me.."why don't you just explore possibilities...why don't you just date?" There's very little desire for me to do that. I don't know that that's what I want at the moment, but as soon as I start just living and not looking too far ahead of myself, I think I'll understand a lot more. I think I've actually gone on a couple of dates that I didn't realize until I pieced things together. What's the definition of a date? I guess to me, a date would mean someone takes you out and pays for you, which is exactly what happened, although I didn't think of it that way. hmm...
Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine last night...well, two friends. They both said, "why don't you date just to date?" I guess in my mind, dating is a process of finding someone you can potentially spend your life with. I never really thought of it as just getting to know people and "letting them make you feel special." That's what my other friend said. haha.
In a book I read, the author said, " You shouldn't love based on fear...that's not loving unconditionally."
One of the friends I talked to last night also say, "If God intended it to be a certain way, no matter how much you fight it, it will end up that way. He will laugh at you for wanting to know the answer right now." She also told me to think of it like the pages in the book of my life. If this page is too hard to understand at the moment, I can just fold it in half and go on to the next page. I can revisit that page, open it up and find that I understand it a lot better because of the answers the pages I moved on to gave me.
I love this imagery! Well, I don't really know what it is...a metaphor? Anyway, that really help put things in perspective for me. I think I need a break from all of this and just take this time to enjoy life for what is it. It's true, there IS connectedness amidst separateness.
In my creative mind, there is a future too.
Many have asked me.."why don't you just explore possibilities...why don't you just date?" There's very little desire for me to do that. I don't know that that's what I want at the moment, but as soon as I start just living and not looking too far ahead of myself, I think I'll understand a lot more. I think I've actually gone on a couple of dates that I didn't realize until I pieced things together. What's the definition of a date? I guess to me, a date would mean someone takes you out and pays for you, which is exactly what happened, although I didn't think of it that way. hmm...
Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine last night...well, two friends. They both said, "why don't you date just to date?" I guess in my mind, dating is a process of finding someone you can potentially spend your life with. I never really thought of it as just getting to know people and "letting them make you feel special." That's what my other friend said. haha.
In a book I read, the author said, " You shouldn't love based on fear...that's not loving unconditionally."
One of the friends I talked to last night also say, "If God intended it to be a certain way, no matter how much you fight it, it will end up that way. He will laugh at you for wanting to know the answer right now." She also told me to think of it like the pages in the book of my life. If this page is too hard to understand at the moment, I can just fold it in half and go on to the next page. I can revisit that page, open it up and find that I understand it a lot better because of the answers the pages I moved on to gave me.
I love this imagery! Well, I don't really know what it is...a metaphor? Anyway, that really help put things in perspective for me. I think I need a break from all of this and just take this time to enjoy life for what is it. It's true, there IS connectedness amidst separateness.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Chapter 4: Stay Loyal to Your Journey
Everything I write here is from the book, so I just won't use quotations.
Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body--the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. You learn to realize when you "hit your edges"--when you feel backed up against a wall, scared to see what you see, know what you know, or feel what you feel. When people hit an edge they usually run away by going numb, distracting themselves, changing the subject, counter-attacking, overindulging in food or drink, or blaming.
To be loyal to your journey is to care for yourself and remember that at your center, you are a luminous essence capable of compassion and love. Buddhists use many images to describe our inner perfection: the sun behind the clouds, a pot of gold underneath the ground, a jewel that is buried in mud beside the road. Using the jewel image, we can remember that the precious stone is beautiful, radiant, and shining, but unless someone digs it up and washes off the mud, it cannot shine or be appreciated. Most of us have coverings over the jewel that is within us--the false beliefs and masks that block our connection to our perfect essence.
As we are conditioned, programmed, and taught how to look, how to be, how to behave, how to act, how to imagine, how to feel and how to think, our essence becomes submerged between all the "I-dentities" we take on. We learn to please Mom, smile for company, get good grades and make endless adaptations to be noticed and loved. Eventually we lose contact with our essence and even come to fear it. According to Wolinsky, an I-dentity, if it enters this emptiness...imagines annihilation, nonexistence, or death. This inner emptiness is the inner Essence which we all seek and which contains essential qualities like love, peace, power, invulnerablity, and so on, and which is intrinsic to the nature of Essence.
If we're disconnected from the music of our essence, and attempt to find happiness through another's song, there will be dependency and a relationship without harmony.
The spiritual path is a process of unmasking ourselves rather than changing or repairing ourselves. Our task is to crack through and soften the layers upon layers of personas and masks we have donned to protect us from the false core beliefs that cover our hurts, losses, and loneliness.
We start by being aware of our masks, curious about their purpose, amused by their cleverness, yet always remembering that masks are simply that--they can't love. We can remove these coverings in a thousand ways: We might quietly say to our beloved, "I'm feeling afraid, can we sit together in this fear" Most of all we need to recognize our fear as ours, and not attribute them to the weather, the stars, or another person.
Finally, if you want love and friendship, if you want to know beauty, you must walk the path undisguised.
That's a lot for one chapter huh? I couldn't help but share it all with you guys. These are the ideas that stood out to me the most and I guess I've been praying about them a bit myself.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body--the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. You learn to realize when you "hit your edges"--when you feel backed up against a wall, scared to see what you see, know what you know, or feel what you feel. When people hit an edge they usually run away by going numb, distracting themselves, changing the subject, counter-attacking, overindulging in food or drink, or blaming.
To be loyal to your journey is to care for yourself and remember that at your center, you are a luminous essence capable of compassion and love. Buddhists use many images to describe our inner perfection: the sun behind the clouds, a pot of gold underneath the ground, a jewel that is buried in mud beside the road. Using the jewel image, we can remember that the precious stone is beautiful, radiant, and shining, but unless someone digs it up and washes off the mud, it cannot shine or be appreciated. Most of us have coverings over the jewel that is within us--the false beliefs and masks that block our connection to our perfect essence.
As we are conditioned, programmed, and taught how to look, how to be, how to behave, how to act, how to imagine, how to feel and how to think, our essence becomes submerged between all the "I-dentities" we take on. We learn to please Mom, smile for company, get good grades and make endless adaptations to be noticed and loved. Eventually we lose contact with our essence and even come to fear it. According to Wolinsky, an I-dentity, if it enters this emptiness...imagines annihilation, nonexistence, or death. This inner emptiness is the inner Essence which we all seek and which contains essential qualities like love, peace, power, invulnerablity, and so on, and which is intrinsic to the nature of Essence.
If we're disconnected from the music of our essence, and attempt to find happiness through another's song, there will be dependency and a relationship without harmony.
The spiritual path is a process of unmasking ourselves rather than changing or repairing ourselves. Our task is to crack through and soften the layers upon layers of personas and masks we have donned to protect us from the false core beliefs that cover our hurts, losses, and loneliness.
We start by being aware of our masks, curious about their purpose, amused by their cleverness, yet always remembering that masks are simply that--they can't love. We can remove these coverings in a thousand ways: We might quietly say to our beloved, "I'm feeling afraid, can we sit together in this fear" Most of all we need to recognize our fear as ours, and not attribute them to the weather, the stars, or another person.
Finally, if you want love and friendship, if you want to know beauty, you must walk the path undisguised.
That's a lot for one chapter huh? I couldn't help but share it all with you guys. These are the ideas that stood out to me the most and I guess I've been praying about them a bit myself.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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