Sunday, September 28, 2008

Re-Dedicating My Life

It seems clear to me that there is nothing more important we can do for our life's work than to find something we love doing, something that moves us all by itself, and doing that until we are the best we can be at it. Not compared to everybody else, but compared to all the other things we could be doing with our time. As one man once said, "What e'er thou art, act well thy part." Be the best YOU, that you can be, and that only happens when we stop living on the whims of others and start responding to the call of our hearts, and, as Stephen R. Covey says, "Find our Voices".

The truth of the matter is that some never do, find their voice. So many die with their music still in them. So many never rise above the proverbial "lives of quiet desperation."

What would it be like to not have to awake with an alarm clock, like that morning we were off to Disneyland for the first time.

We live in an abundant world, and we certainly, here in America, have no shortage of the tools God has provided all of us, to live lives of abundance.

Why do so many, in such a land of opportunity lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is our base nature to be selfish, and to seek first and foremost for that which is momentarily pleasing.

Do we have a choice whether or not to live such shallow lives? Certainly we do have a choice, but so many of us fail to find a reason strong enough to motivate us to make the right choice. It is not that we do not want "true joy." It is that so many simply do not see the value in finding something to move us to rise above pleasing the senses, to that joy that can only be felt by a life lived to God's full desire for us.

Can we find the motivation on our own? I don't think so. I think we must seek to feel God's plan for us, to feel about ourselves the way he must feel, if that is possible.

To see things as he sees them. Can we do that by ourselves? No, but he grants to each man and woman, as much of a glimpse as that man or woman is ready to see, and so the challenge; the primary challenge, is to cleanse the channel between us and Him. To make the communication between us and Him so clean and clear, and feel the gratitude for all He has given us, that we can truly acknowledge his hand in all things.

Then can we begin to see things all around us that have been there all the time, but that we never noticed, or whose import we never realized.

I am awakening to a new phase of my life, and the possibilities are limitless.


Wednesday, September 24, 2008

While America Was Dreaming

Well, here we sit on the brink of the largest possible financial disaster in World History, and we all saw it coming a year or more ago, but while some were saying we are in a recession but doing nothing, others were saying, "the fundamentals of our economy are as sound as ever."

The problem we now have is that many leaders are lining up, happy to try their hand at saving us from this awful mess they have gotten us into, using exactly the same tricks that brought down Enron and other huge corporations.  By claiming that deregulation equals less government interference, they set us up with what feels like the "Free Market Capitalism" we all thought we were living in, all the while, allowing unchecked greed to take its course on weaker players and unaware consumers.  (Enron is a good example of this with massive power shut downs in California because of price gaming by some speculators and traders, affecting millions of people's lives while a few played God.)

When the damage has been done, and the major players that know better have ditched and taken their booty with them, the government then swoops in and says they will save us, but we are all going to have to tighten our purse strings for a few years and there may be a lot of people losing their retirements, but we can't bail out all the little people, because if the big guys fall, we all fall.  So we are going to have to prop up the big guys and you all are going to be okay eventually.  Because of the prior deregulation, what was morally wrong, has not been legally wrong, so those responsible, are guilty only of guessing wrong and losing millions of other people's money while protected from personal responsibility, going down in infamy, to have to spend the rest of their wretched lives consulting, or worse, retiring in some other part of the world with the booty.

Here we go again.  Hurry up and pass this well-thought, carefully constructed 3 page, $700 Billion dollar proposal that gives emperor like decision power over who lives and who dies, company-wise.  The game gets more wild as both sides wrangle to win support, and Bush looks more pathetic than ever with his laymen terms lesson of how all this nucular economics thing works and why this "sitiation" has all of a sudden become so dire there is no way we can just hope it away any more, like we did the whole last 8 years.

What can we do?  Does this now set up our President, 4 months before leaving office, to put into place some huge sweeping reform, an Executive Order maybe, worse than the Twin Towers justification for Homeland Security, wiretapping, the torture and killing of innocent people, and the like?

We can only wait in suspense.  What else is there at this point?

Tick Tock.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Arizona Might Be Hot, But After A Monsoon...

After a summer monsoon in Arizona, there is hardly a sight more worth seeing than an Arizona sunset.

I often ponder where else I want to live, and now that the Global economy is opening up and my world is less geographically dependent, Arizona summers always get me thinking what a big world I really live in.

But now that I can capture these on a fairly frequent basis with my iPhone, I have been getting some really beautiful ones.

It certainly gives one pause, and always takes my breath away. To me, there is no more sure testimony that I am part of a larger plan, and am touched daily by my creator, and my Father.