WASS/THOMAS FAMILY HOLIDAY/CHRISTMAS CARD

I (Will) took this picture at the opening to the beach at Fort Lauderdale, after we came back from the cruise. I had set the light too high, and everything, including the white wall Kathy was sitting on disappeared. I didn't have a chance to delete it. And later when I downloaded it, it reminded me of the Presence of God -- often hidden in the sensory details of normal life.

Kathy and our granddaughter, Becca.

Kathy and our granddaughter Ally.

Kathy and her mom.

One of Kathy's Christmas outfits. She begins wearing them at Thanksgiving

and wears a different one every day until January 4th.

It's fun to watch people smile when they see her outfit.

Kathy's Dad at Thanksgiving.

Kathy "managing" gifts and fun at a birthday.

The new house: historic, over 100 years old in Clifton.

Kathy playing the Easter Bunny.

Designer Easter Baskets: granddaughters, Eva and Mandy.

Kathy and Will's Dad at Cracker Barrel in Rocky Mount, NC.

Internal Medicine Board Review in Atlanta.

Barbie Convention in Washington, DC: Barbie turned 50.

Thanksgiving at Kathy's sister's - Joyce. Another Christmas outfit.

Kathy's cats: Sweet Pea and Hopscotch

Sammy giving Billy "five".

Kathy on our cruise -- Carnival Miracle.

Kathy and Will on Cruise.

On cruise, matching tropicals.

Grandkids at Easter parade: Luke, Mandy, Eva, Jake, Levi.

Family at Easter Parade.

Will holding granddaughter, Ally.

Will with granddaughters, Eva, Mandy, and Becca.

Billy and Mandy -- Sunday bunch at Galt House for birthdays.

Dana reading Becca a book.

Billy with Becca at Mall.

Billy, Dana, Mandy, Eva at Spring Mill for Pioneer Days.

Granddaughters, Becca, Mandy, and Eva in matching Christmas PJs.

Chris and Debra were married in January on the beach.


Chris and Debra's children -- our grandchildren -- Luke, Levi, Jake, and Ally.

Ally with dad, Chris -- trampoline kiss.

Granddaughter, Ally, with Chris's wife, Debra.

Granddaughter, Ally, enjoying the "sacred orb' of the Halloween season.

Will started his blog in August: Finding Daily Inspirations.....

And Kathy learned to walk on water.

MORE PICTURES TO COME....

Holiday Dreaming -- Daily Inspirations for the Holidays

This morning I woke up with a dream: I was in a foreign country on a trip, when I thought that I did not have enough money. So I went down to this place where clerks acted as an ATM to give people cash from their bank accounts. I got $300, and I saw on the receipt that they charged me a $55 service charge. This disturbed me, but what choice did I have – and it was already done. Later I decided I wanted more money, and I went back to get more. This time I processed for $1000, but this time they charged me $550 service charge, and didn’t give me my money. I went all around trying to find someone to complain to and get my money, but no one was available. No one was seemingly there anymore.

As I was journaling about my dream later, I became aware of some of its significance for me.

The “foreign country” was the holiday season. There is no time comparable to this time in our culture. Suddenly it is like we have gone to different place with different ways of doing things – away from “home”.

When, in the dream, I thought that I did not have enough money, I don’t remember how much money I actually had. I just remember thinking that I needed “more”.

I am aware that when I participate in the “foreign country” – the Holidays – from a material perspective, there is always a hidden service charge about to be assessed to my spiritual “account”.

As I listened, I remembered that the spiritual intent and purpose of the holidays is celebrate the offer and receipt of intimate and loving Presence from our God, and then from others – and finally from ourselves. As the holidays become materialized, there is a spiritual price that is being assessed to our “presence” account.

Spirituality, in my experience, is the loving, unconditional Presence that we can have with God, with others, and with ourselves. So we can lose conscious contact – Presence – with God, with others, and with ourselves -- which is really the meaning and purpose of the season?

Jesus said, “Do not lay up treasure on earth where rust can corrupt, thieves can break in and still, and moths can devour. But lay up treasure in heaven”. And “the kingdom of heaven is within you.”

The spiritual meaning of the season is within us, not outside us. And every time we take intimate hope, joy, and love outside our inner selves, we pay an increasingly high price of self. We pay a price of separation and disconnection from our God, others, and from ourselves.

And because it is the “Season”, we tend to just accept the cost and go on. What else can we do?
What if we gave ourselves – and not things to others? This is a “foreign country” – many would probably not understand what they were being given. And we could possibly be abandoned and rejected by others who do not know the spiritual language of Presence. They might not understand. We are not sure if we could “understand” ourselves.

Where can we go from here?

There are two options, as I experience this.

1. 
   First, we can submerge ourselves into the unconsciousness of the season with all its material distractions and disruptions of self-awareness and Presence. We can just take the loss of the outrageous “service charges”, and go on into the oblivion of darkening shadows -- something not quite being there – missing – the real Presence that belongs under every Christmas tree.



2. 
   Or we can take the risk of consciously feeling our losses and fears – the separations between ourselves and our God and others – that the Season tries to mask and disguise – hide from our consciousness. And we can take these conscious feelings to our God, and to others who are also struggling with these same awarenesses. We can listen and connect to a higher Presence, and with this higher Presence’s love, take conscious action to reinsert our real selves into the Spirit of the holidays. Whether with gifts or with only our presence, we can give others a deeper, more present and loving connection and intimacy. Some may not understand – some may even be frightened by the consciousness our intimacy and love produces. But ultimately the “Gift” we will be giving will be real and true.

I have found the story of Jesus’ life interesting: He was described as having been sent as the ultimate “Gift” of God’s Presence. And yet the story of the baby born in a manger ends with His being murdered because the world could not accept His level of intimacy and spiritual consciousness – and the absence of expected material gifts. It is frightening to be real and true – to step beyond the material world and into our own heart worlds. Rejection and abandonment are both possible and likely. But “if we have hope only in this life, we are of all people most miserable.” If you are conscious enough to experience some level of misery with this “foreign country” – the Holidays – we have other options.

Together, we can give something that changes lives and hearts – especially our own. Maybe we can find a way to wrap ourselves in our God’s love, and give ourselves to those we care about – and others we haven’t yet met.

We have a chance to make the Holidays a better place by our God’s design – by the birth and life of our truest, most present selves -- into the lives of others.

What’s Stored In Your Attic? Finding Daily Inspirations in Revisiting Our Pasts

DECEMBER 12, 2009

This morning I was getting ready to journal after my meditation, and I realized the date: today would have been the sixteenth wedding anniversary of myself and my wife who died in January, 2005. I experienced a sadness -- a timelessness -- a remembering -- the last anniversary -- and the one before -- and the holidays.

It felt different -- it felt new and fresh -- and it felt familiar.

Later this same morning, I was at a spiritual support group that I attend on Saturday mornings. The topic was the holidays and using God’s Presence to deal with grief and loss. One person’s grandmother had died last week. One’s daughter had died over thirty years ago, and she was still experiencing parts of her sadness. Another has lost his mother a couple of years ago, and his father this past year. Still another -- her sister died this past year, her sister’s husband was remarrying, and she was experiencing a new and more conscious sadness and grief with the Holidays.

As I sat there, I could see in my mind, an attic -- used for storing Holiday ornaments and decorations for the each year -- and storing other things as well. In our metaphorical attic, we store the memories, dreams, hopes, loves -- that no longer are -- except in storage. Losses we didn’t know what to do with. Deaths of people and of relationships -- stored in compartmentalized containers away in our attic -- until someone or something brings them down out of our attic, and we have to re-experience the pain and fear. Then we can begin to experience spiritual healing -- or return them back to the attic to sit and to wait for our return.

In my experience, two life events primarily sends me or someone else into my attic for more “boxes“:
The first event is change. If we can just go up there and get the decorations of the past and come back down, the rest of past stays stored and safe in our attics. But when things change -- move slightly or greatly -- we and others take ourselves back to or further into our attics, and we begin going through some more “boxes“ of stored memories. We begin to remember.
The second event that brings more of us out is our improving conscious contact with our God -- conscious Presence. As we become more and more spiritually awake through daily inspirations, we begin to remember -- we begin to return to our attics and find more boxes of our life that we have instinctively stored in the attic.

The Holidays are a prime time to remember and rediscover our pasts. Life during the Holidays is consciously stronger and louder than any other time in the year. The Holidays force us to find forgotten and lost parts of our selves -- and regain or relose these lost selves.

Kathy and I went to a Christmas flea market at the Convention Center in the afternoon. With the experiences of the morning, I found myself looking at people -- as they were shopping or as they passed me by. What I realized was that each face -- each person -- was a reminder, a metaphor for one or more of my lost selves. So I began to watch them, and allow them to remind me of boxes of selves still in my attic, and begin to re-experience some of my selves. I didn’t finish -- and I am aware that many more boxes and experiences still lie ahead.

I shared with Kathy at lunch about my remembering and experiencing my old anniversary. Being the wonderful person she is, she saw, bought, and had personalized a very special Christmas tree ornament -- just for me.

On the ornament was written, “You may miss me, but I am spending Christmas with Jesus this year. Love, Liz”.

We don’t have to be afraid of what’s in our attic -- as long as we have our God’s Presence to comfort and spiritually empower us to live through the possible pain and fear -- allowing the past to be restored to being a loving part of our Present.






December 15

After writing this, some boxes from the past came down out of my attic.

I was talking to my daughter about an hour ago, and she told me of the tragic and sudden death a special couple in Austin, Indiana -- James and Jackie Jewell. My daughter understood that they were traveling on the interstate between Austin and Scottsburg, when they were bumped from behind, losing control of their car and careening across the median and into the path of a oncoming semi. Both were killed instantly.

As I was standing in White Kastles a little while ago waiting for my order, I could feel tears swelling up inside -- I became nervous and embarrassed that someone might see my tears and wonder what was wrong with me.

I could feel myself beginning to go through the boxes of memories with their names on them. In 1974, I came to a church in Austin as a summer youth pastor before going back to college my senior year. This couple were leaders of a small group of church people who took a special interest in me, and were very kind, caring, and supportive. As I am re-experiencing this time and events, I remember that they were the first members of the denomination in which I had grown up, who could care and love unconditionally, without religious judgments and ultimate criticism -- without abandoning.

I came back to Austin to live there for several years, and they continued to be the same kind and compassionate people I had met and known.

I am glad to have had them in my life. And now, as I am remembering and experiencing their presence I am realizing that the treasures of their simple loving care can now be stored forever in my heart. They are not going back into the attic.

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Is Your Soul for Sale? Holiday Hazards and Daily Inspirations

This morning as I was journaling, I became aware of how I have been struggling with insecurities regarding my worth and value as a person in this material world -- especially during the Holidays. I realized that I have been struggling to find a human way to validate and certify myself as a person of value and purpose -- with fluctuating success.

Three years ago, I sold a business and ended up managing a very special doctor’s practice after an sudden change left the doctor without a group with which to practice. Both have become good news, but both involved massive changes and losses of external life reference points that humans use to identify and validate themselves.

About five years ago-- right after the Holidays -- my wife of eleven years died of cancer -- after two really horrendous and painful years -- more change and loss.

I am still managing this practice, and in August I started writing a blog that has really taken me deeper and deeper inside myself -- more and more self and God intimate.

Change -- the loss of life reference points -- has left me feeling vulnerable and uncertain about who I am and what I am meant to give to others. Change and losses disorient human beings -- especially when there are no clear or pressing problems off of which to “reflect” ourselves.

As I was discussing my awarenesses with a spiritual friend, I remembered movies and stories where persons would sell their soul to Satan in order to obtain certain outcomes that they wanted. I would never do that, but actually I did try to sell my soul -- not to Satan -- but to “Jesus”.

From before I was born, my family was very active in a very fundamentalist church. As a child I was very insecure, timid, never feeling good enough. In my experience, fundamentalist religion teaches that God has to do what you ask -- if you do what you are “supposed” to do. Years later I realize that this message implied -- or stated -- the offer to sell my soul to get what I wanted. Happiness would have been nice, love and acceptance would have been wonderful, but most of all I wanted relief -- to stop feeling so much feeling -- so much pain and fear.

So at eight years old I began to bargain with God to sell my soul -- I got “saved“. I began reading the Bible, praying, and became active in my church -- trying to be good enough to have Jesus purchase my soul -- take everything that was important to me, and give me relief.

I spent a lot of years and effort in this pursuit, and finally gave up about twenty years ago. Depression, and anxiety was ruling my life -- and I could find no peace.

Twenty years ago I discovered and began a spiritual journey through a different set of principles not rules -- spiritual not religious. From these principles and the people who shared similar life issues and challenges, I began to find a different life. I realized that my God is not interested in possessing my soul -- or me. They want my heart -- my love and presence within Their Love and Presence -- intimate closeness, companionship, and friendship. They have no conditions for Their love, care, and kindness. They are a Presence that exceeds all my human thought and understanding -- they can only be experienced -- they cannot be “known“ by my brain.

So what does this have to do with the Holidays?

Is your soul for sell? Are we selling parts of ourselves -- or all of ourselves -- our souls -- to be loved, accepted, cared about -- maybe just to not be abandoned, alone, forgotten? Are we consciously or unconsciously trying to meet someone else’s conditions and expectations, and in the process losing and selling ourselves? For how much would we sell our souls -- the beauty and grace we were created with -- for the hope of a different, seemingly better outcome?

The Holidays are a metaphor -- an experiential symbol -- for all of our lives and loves. If we can begin to find our God’s unconditionally loving and caring Presence, maybe we can begin to take a spiritual stand for our spiritual and personal freedom. Maybe we can begin to give our presence to others, and not remain the “slaves” of others’ obvious and hidden -- dark-- expectations and demands of others.

Progress is Perfection. Let’s start here. Let’s take as much of ourselves as we can off the market -- and give our deepest love and presence to those who can receive us this Holiday.

To those who have hearts that love, let them be loved -- joy pressed down and running over -- coming from our most innermost beings to others.

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Photography/graphics by W. Wass

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