The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience

That was the last of them.

The third box of books was loaded into the car, the next stop was the barn behind the old church, the storage point for donated books for their annual used book sale later in the year.

Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I’ve been downsizing many segments of my life of late. The stuff I’ve collected over a lifetime which I no longer want to hold on to. Stuff. Expectations.

Today, it was the books’ turn to go.

As I loaded the boxes, I realized that the vast majority of them were books I never fully read, as indicated by the number of bookmarks I found lodged into the first third of the pages of many of them. I guess the enthusiasm which motivated me to initially purchase them greatly waned as I actually started to read them. With so many of these books being not fully read, I realized there was one thing each of these unread books had in common.

Me.

I’ve had an interesting relationship with books. My now-almost-empty bookshelf was filled with the books of a seeker; non-fiction, self-help, self-improvement, spiritual, psychological, and growth-oriented themes. I bought each one for a specific reason, yet at some point early in these books I’d become a bit disillusioned and put them down only to then pick up the next book I had also excitedly purchased, only to abandon it early on just like the others before it.

Giving up on a bad book seems logical, but when you give up on all the books the books aren’t the problem.

As someone who has been a lifelong seeker, I was hoping each of these books would bring me closer to that which I really wasn’t sure I was hoping to find. I knew I was looking for something and I would grow increasingly impatient the deeper I got into these books when I felt it was going to be just another dead end on my spiritual journey.

Each book was a tangent of sorts, a tangent wrapped in the elevated expectation that THIS book was the one which would deliver me the wisdom I demanded to learn. No pressure, right?

One thing I learned on my meandering journey of life is my impatience consistently created elevated levels of frustration, especially towards myself. The pressure of not finding what I wasn’t Continue reading “The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience” →

What Would God Change About You?

Nothing.

In a Universe of intention, we are all created purposefully and deliberately, each of us a unique collection of talents, gifts, and abilities here to fully express the intention inherent with our creation.

Sometimes we forget that part.

Sometimes the inner and outer voices would have us believe a different story, the one in which we’re not good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, or strong enough as we already are. We often feel a pressure to change, to abandon who we are in order to become something we inherently are not.

When we become something we are not, we abandon those things that make us the beautiful, never to be repeated, once in Continue reading “What Would God Change About You?” →

What To Say When You’re Having Coffee with God

It was quite surreal.

I was sitting at a round wooden table in a busy coffee shop having a nice conversation. With God. He looked a lot like I thought He would look like, sort of an older version of the images of Jesus I’ve seen all my life. Same eyes.

Surprisingly, no one else in the coffee shop knew who He was. Oblivious, they were simply going about their collective days, too busy to notice perhaps?

Or, maybe He was there just for me.

At some point during our brief time together, I worked up the courage to ask Him an important question. An important question I’d been seeking answers to for most of my life.

“God?”

“Yes, Pete?”

“Am I worthy to receive the abundance of blessings of the Universe, to become all I have been created to become?”

God paused, put down His coffee, and looked me square in the eyes.

“Have I ever told you that you’re not?”

And with that, God stood up, and with a wink and a smile left me alone to reflect upon His answer.

It was quite the dream, but the message was anything but.

God has never told me I’m not worthy. He’s has never told anyone that they aren’t worthy. Yet somehow life has a way to often create a disconnect between who we are and who we think we are. And who we think we are is often much less than God’s intention behind our creation.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded of our worth, of our value, of our significance, of our birthright to allow and receive the blessings inherent with our own creation.

To allow ourselves to become what we’ve each individually been created to become.

Unless God tells you otherwise.

And He won’t.

How Much Of You Are You Willing To Leave Undone?

What if we were to see ourselves the same way God sees us?

God has a lot of big ideas. And each of us is one of them. Each of us intentionally created in our own unique way. It’s the uniqueness of our individual talents, gifts, and abilities that we are here to develop and share with the world. Little pieces of God’s biggest idea.

God doesn’t just create things for the sake of creating them. Honestly, I don’t think He needs the practice. In a world of divine intention, there are no accidents. All of nature and all of humanity are here for very specific purposes.

The intention of creation is full expression. The idea becomes reality. That is what nature does. Trees grow as tall as they are supposed to. Trees don’t question their worthiness nor do they compare themselves to other trees and decide they aren’t good enough and decide to play small. They just grow, fully evolve, fully expressing the intention of their creation.

For us humans, the full expression of our own creation often gets a bit complicated.

Becoming all we were intended to become certainly has its challenges. Perhaps the greatest challenge is actually figuring out exactly what it is we were created for. Our Continue reading “How Much Of You Are You Willing To Leave Undone?” →

God Wants You To Drive A Lambroghini

And have a beach house, too.

Actually, God doesn’t really care about what you drive or how you spend your vacations.

He just wants you to embrace the abundance.

Abundance. Some seem to embody it, while others enviously want it, and still others never think they’re supposed to have it.

Abundance isn’t about money and the collection of material things; rather, it’s about living with a “there’s more than enough” mindset. Abundance is a choice, an attitude, an option as to how one decides to see the world. And it’s that choice which forms the Continue reading “God Wants You To Drive A Lambroghini” →

Random Acts of Blindness

Until you understand their pain, you will never understand the person. Without such understanding, the truth is inevitably distorted, and our expectations of others are flawed from the very beginning.

Understanding another’s pain is itself a flawed concept. To truly know pain you must own it. No matter their best intentions, no one else will ever know exactly how you feel. But what needs to be understood is that there is pain in all of us, the emotional dents and dings collected on life’s journey.

We judge others by what we see in front of us. Actions and attitudes not meeting our expectations are often met with harshness and disdain. A logical response in the mind of many. But what if we Continue reading “Random Acts of Blindness” →

The True Gift Of Gratitude

As a kid, one of the best parts of my birthday was receiving birthday cards from my uncles and grandparents. Especially those cards designed specifically to hold cash. In all honesty, it was never about the card; I was really only excited about what was in the card.

It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was money. Just because I was born!

The rule back then was quite simple. You picked up the phone and called to thank the elders who sent the cash your way. Failure to acknowledge their generosity was a sure-fired way to get on the Ungrateful List. Kids on the Ungrateful List usually never saw those cards designed specifically to hold cash ever again.

I was happy to receive the cash, and always made the thank you calls. But my gratitude was laced with self-serving elements. I wanted to ensure Continue reading “The True Gift Of Gratitude” →

Are You Buying Into The BS of Your Own Imperfection?

So, you’re telling me God got it wrong?

Growing up in an industrial mill city here in New England we had our share of factory outlet stores. Not the fancy destination “outlet” malls with food courts we see today. Our factory outlets were an extension of the manufacturing facility where “slightly irregular” items were sold off in an effort to recoup some money on manufacturing mistakes. These imperfect items just didn’t measure up and meet the quality standards demanded by their customers.

It’s logical to expect some manufactured items would end up with some imperfections. But when it comes to people, I just don’t see God as one who makes mistakes.

I was intrigued earlier this week overhearing a conversation about imperfections. The premise surmised personal imperfections are Continue reading “Are You Buying Into The BS of Your Own Imperfection?” →

Your Mother Did Not Give Birth to a Cubic Zirconia

My dog doesn’t have earrings. And neither do I.

But everyone else in my house does, along with their collection of rings, bracelets, and necklaces. None of which belong to me.

Or my dog.

Jewelry. It gets dirty and dull sometimes. Gunk like hair spray, soap, gel and other yucky stuff build up and the jewelry loses it’s sparkle. From what they tell me, the best way to clean such delicate items is by using ultrasonic sound waves. Rings and bracelets are placed in a small water-filled container and the thousands of microscopic bubbles created by vibrations within the container gently remove all the dirt particles.

Once cleansed, the jewelry regains it’s original luster, allowing it to shine as brightly and radiantly as it originally did.

Life has a way of coating all of us with it’s own residue of yucky stuff which can prevent Continue reading “Your Mother Did Not Give Birth to a Cubic Zirconia” →

Why Is My New BFF

Is fear the answer to your life’s most important question?

On the way home from school the other day my daughter and I were discussing the first day of spring. Inquisitively as kids often are I was asked to explain where the seasons come from. Ill prepared for a science lesson, I ended up citing the rotation of the Earth as the reason we have seasons. Which lead to the follow up question asking why the Earth rotates, to which I responded “God made it that way”. Which lead to her predictable response:

“Why?”

“Why?” has become an important question for me. Why? This older, more reflective version of me is on a quest of evaluating many areas of my life. Continue reading “Why Is My New BFF” →

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Tag: God