Archive for the tag “moments”

11 Jul 2012

The Everyday Miracles

Do miracles exist?

They are there in your life. There every day when you step from the curb, say hello to the check out clerk, take the hand of your child, smile at your coworker, so many things that we do each day involve the simple greatness of life. Each action and reaction can cause a chain reaction that you may more than likely never know. Like waves in the ocean, or the wind across the field of grass. We are so unconscious in our simple actions, that we are not paying attention to the motions around us. Do you see such miracles as they happen as we live our lives?

Take a deep breath in, take another one out. Enjoy the fact that you are living on the Earth and are fortunate to be here online in the world-wide web…communicating with each other in such a way that we can share ideas, share the amazement of life, reach across oceans and continents to communicate about all the world has to offer. And when we do, there is an opportunity for confirmation of what being a human-being on this Earth means.

It amazes me everyday how similar so many people are across the globe. Feeling the emotions of sadness, elation, anger and relief, love and kindness, compassion and understanding. It truly is the miracle that we have to experience every day.

We are not alone, we have each other. So much more can be done, and every movement can be a miracle. We are so fortunate that we can decide, when so many others in the world cannot. We can influence simple miracles that will make a difference for someone we have never met, or may never meet. Just like we can influence our neighbours, our family, or friends or the person passing us on the street. We can reach out beyond that and follow our mission while we are here on Earth. Putting our tracks in the dust will eventually blow away with time, but the next persons tracks will take over. And the line can go for eternity with just a simple choice.

There are miracles happening everyday. We all can participate in making them happen. Have faith, be aware of what you can do to affect human change, it seems like it is infinitely more than you are aware of.

Posted in Before and After Things Change, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, being remembered, Eternity, Faith, God, Grace, life is precious, living on the earth, Miracle, moments, Religion and Spirituality, tracks in the dust

08 Jul 2012

2 Comments

Tell Me About Yourself Award

I suppose there are a lot of “awards” in the blog-world of WordPress.com and that all of them have the root of being kind and thoughtful to fellow bloggers. It seems like there are a several that are meant to get more visitors, or share more sites or something.

But I am flattered that someone considered by blog worthy of any recognition. Tracksinthedust.com has always meant to be a list of things just put together that I always wanted to tell my kids, but now they are “old enough” that they either have formulated their own opinions of things. Maybe some of these posts are things that I told them before, or meant to tell them, or just never got around to telling them. I get along really well with 3 of the 4 of them, and they are turning out to be pretty good people, despite the fact that their mom and I had no owners manual.

I always wondered about that, you need a licence to drive a car or own a gun- you need to apply for a loan and fill out paperwork to adopt children or even attempt a laboratory version of parenthood (perhaps). But there’s no test for a man and woman having a child. God willing you leave the hospital and its all up to you. So here I am tracks in the dust, that overtime will blow away on our travels on Earth. We make the decision where those tracks take us, we have the opportunity to follow others or make our own tracks.

Tell Me About Yourself Award

1. Thank the person who nominated you: Thank you Miss Audrey (In Wonderland). When I started posting in WordPress, yours was one of the first blogs I began to follow. I am always amazed with your perspective on life, and certainly where you are in your journey in a country I am not very familiar with. You are about the same age as my kids and I find it comforting that even though you are on the entire other side of the world from them- there are a lot of similarities.

2. Tell the world 7 things about yourself that you have not yet shared

1) I love musicals. Hollywood, Broadway, local theater, made for TV. I am a sucker for them. Can’t tell you why, just am.

2) I have a beard that I have only entirely shaved off twice in my life since I was eighteen. Some of my closest friends think I was born with it. I wasn’t.

3) I have always wanted to be an artist. I mean a painter. But I am lousy at it. I have a very famous cousin who has been an artist most of her life I think. Her talent amazes me every time I look at her work.

4) I have written over a 1000 lyrics to songs, spanning over decades of writing. Poems if you want to call them that. Some of them have music with them, others have gotten music written to them by many of my musical friends. Some just are terrible, but that’s inspiration.

5) I was on the radio hosting a public service topical show about JFK’s assassination with a famous authority, when John Lennon was shot and killed. I spent the next 8 hours playing his music and taking calls. It sticks in my memory all these decades later. Imagine.

6) I have always owned practical cars, but just once it would be great to have owned a hot sports car that goes really fast. Priorities are for real.

7) Give me a subject and 48 hours, and I can stand up and speak about it. I wasnt that way when I was younger, but public speaking just became part of what I do.

3. Nominate 7 fellow bloggers and let them know

A great group of beautiful people, beautiful words, amazing pictures and stories… thank you.

http://noblogintended.wordpress.com/

http://istopforsuffering.wordpress.com/

http://findingravity.com/

http://thetruthwarrior.wordpress.com/

http://hopethehappyhugger.wordpress.com/

http://m5son.wordpress.com/

http://starsrainsunmoon.com/

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Blog, Blog award, Definitions, Happiness, Memories, moments, Reality Check, tracks in the dust, Truth

02 Jul 2012

4 Comments

Our Emotional Life

Emotion is such a human thing, isn’t it? We thrive on it and need it to be able to exist. The emotional range of life provides us the very highest of happiness to the depths of sadness, from grief to elation, from the top of achievement and all that goes with it, to the bottom of disappointment in failure.

All of these are part of being human, of living our lives however long they may be. But for some of us we try so hard to put emotions away – bury them so that they cannot get out where others may see them. Yet for others, these emotions trap us in a place where then we can often get caught. It is then we get stuck for what seems endless days, weeks perhaps even years where no escape appears. Perhaps we cannot see the escape, or maybe we just aren’t looking for it. Sure, and there are those who are forever on that “high” as well, blindly flying along with the need to drive to the pinnacle every day. Taking in everything and everyone around them like a vacuum, and not stopping to see what falls along the wayside as the go.

Emotion is human, and it has a lot to do with our progress in life. It drives the very reasons that we persevere, it kindles the very fires that keep us burning for more. It is the center of love, it is the root of hate. It fuels happiness and fear. We fight it, we resist its change, and yet we cherish it and love its diversity. We let it control us and we sometimes let it make us do things we know in our heart are not right, but also let us guide us toward the power of the Spirit by loving everything and everyone around us.

How do you handle it? Are you on the rollercoaster and it goes up and down, or the carousel that goes endlessly around? When you sense it is changing, do you find yourself fighting it? How do you understand when it has clouded your heart? Do you smother your emotions or let them breathe? I guess the first thing to do seems to be to recognise they are there for us because we need them. It may be good to be passionately involved with your emotions. Don’t be angry that they exist, but be sure you have the opportunity to experience them without forever trapping your at the extremes. How would you recognise the difference otherwise.

“To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life.” Brennan Manning

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Doubt, Emotion, Happiness, Joy, Love, moments, Philosophy, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, Thought

28 Jun 2012

2 Comments

Choosing Reconciliation

There are times in your life when there will be conflict, with your family, lover or friends. There will just be things you will never agree on, because that is the way all humans are designed. It is good to be different. So what then? Perhaps you can focus on reconciliation rather than resolution. I have noticed over the years with many of my friends that couldn’t find a way to grasp this in their relationships, that they lost too much in the process. They expended so much energy in their lives that they would never recover.

Reconciliation drives toward re-establishing relationships. Resolution on the other hand, targets the thought that you have to resolve every issue by coming to a conclusive agreement on everything. I think deep inside most of us know that it can’t happen that way. Whether you both love each other, are the “best of friends” or are highly spiritually centered, whether you have made a promise to never disagree or are determined to “be yourself” at all costs; there are going to be some things you’ll never agree on.

But you can disagree without becoming disagreeable — that’s what God calls wisdom. “It’s wise to compromise. You can have unity without uniformity. You can walk hand-in-hand without seeing eye-to-eye. You can have reconciliation without resolution of every issue.”

It continues to be such a trend today to focus on “being yourself” by being declared unique, and while that itself is important, we seem to take that to an extreme. We risk declaring ourselves so special, so privileged in our sovereign definition of “me” that we forget the fundamental things that brought us together in as friends, or as a “couple” or as what the core of our family. Many of the people around me seem to sacrifice their relationships in order to stand upon their “individualism” and then later wonder why they are alone, why they are forever struggling with the interaction of the world around them.

So we have to appreciate the differences, but then focus on the relationship. I have noticed that often looking back the issues that were creating the rifts in my relationships, they have become insignificant in the scheme of things. In our world full of broken relationships, we would be so much better off if we could commit to striving toward reconciliation.

Making the effort is more than half the battle, winning is not the ultimate reward here. (Sorry for all you self achievers on that point). People often still ask me how I can be married for as long as I have. The words love and honor in the traditional wedding vows are followed by obey, but the thing to obey is our focus on the relationship, the reconciliation and the rewards of what that brings to love. That is one of the things my wife and I are working on every day, and I hope that everyone can keep doing what we can to “make it work”.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Advice, choices, Compassion, Conflict resolution, Kindness, moments, Reconciliation, relationships, Self-Awareness, Self-Help

26 Jun 2012

1 Comment

The Seasons and The Hot Summer Day

When I was growing up in the northern mid-west of the US, we always looked forward to the seasons. Each one of them brought a change in attitude, and every season signified something special in some way. I recall as a child I thinking of summer to be those warm days where some days were really hot and the bright sun that you would feel on your skin would be the fuel for a days worth of playing, like sunshine was energy. There would be humid days where everyone would comment “it’s not the heat that’s bad, it’s the humidity”. That too would pass as one of those huge storms would conger up the bursts of thunder and lighting, but also bring the breath of fresh air after the storms. Refreshing you like magic, with cool air the likes of something you hadn’t sucked into your lungs in some time.

Then there was fall. Autumn. Colors of the trees, the crisp night air and the smell of burning leaves. Some days would be wet and the trees and leaves would smell musty. There would be that day when it would rain a cold rain, a hard rain that would put shivers down your neck if you were out in it. By the next day all the leaves would be almost all gone, and the sky would turn a defiantly grey tone letting everyone know winter was knocking.

Oh those winters. In northern states, they could be brutal. Cold on top of cold, ice coated with ice. Cars not starting, cold winds shuddering the outside walls of my home. There would be days where it was so cold a deep breath would hurt and you would know it was time to get from one place to another and not stand out in it. There would be snow, but on those cold days it would crunch like styrofoam under your boots. Almost squeaking with the reminder that you better walk briskly but be mindful of the ice patches underneath. THere were even those lovely “snow days” where schools would be closed, work places too. The snow was so high and thick you weren’t going anywhere and everyone else was in the same place as you. Watching out the window for a break so you could start to shovel out.. peaceful, but cautious we would enjoy the day that nature provided a break.

Spring would start the cycle again. the newness of the grass before the first cut. The trees not exactly full of leaves, but running sap and getting ready for the warm days ahead. Fresh spring rains. Life showing up again in the backyard. Squirrels, birds and bugs. All the time knowing summer was on the other side of all of those spring showers.

So I do miss the seasons. Living in Northern Texas now, it seems like the Texas summers are like those cold winter days in the north. I escape in doors from the heat (104 degrees Fahrenheit today) that will hang around for weeks (maybe months). But I know that in the fall we can lounge in the yard, take long walks in the park. In the winter we can put on a light jacket and say “my how cold it is today” when freezing temps aren’t even in the forecast. All the while others in the north, they will be getting ready for their cold days and icy challenges, pulling out the boots and heavy coats.

I can handle the southern heat knowing that is coming. But there are days when I truly miss the changing seasons. This hot summer day is one of them.