Please, join me in welcoming Tony Barreto as today's guest blogger! Let me know your re-sponse. I appreciate his insight and sensitivity.
Thank you, for dropping by.
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Dear Innkeeper,
I love this stuff, too. Thank you for your share. I re-read a book I interestingly found at a used bookstore, on New Year's Eve.
I was familiar with it years ago. It's a small thin book with 88 small pages. It comes with a strong message. The book is called Practicing Peace in Times of War, written by a Buddhist monk.
The main theme was about having the courage to wait. Wait for what, one might ask.
The answer is to be able to wait and abide with that subtle uneasiness, edginess, restlessness, or threatening energy in our gut.
To have the courage to look for the more ten-der heart underneath the threat.
What does this have to do with the post, "Expressing Feelings?" We're too quick when we react with judgments. Instead of saying "I feel life is exciting," perhaps what I want to honestly say is that "I feel excited to be alive."
Or I feel grateful for how exciting life is right now or how chal-lenging it is because it's teaching me something.
This leads into another theme I have been contemplating. It is appreciating things that weren't so rosy, especially our past.
I got up at 6:30 this morning and watched a movie that unexpec-tedly brought more understanding and appreciation for life. After the movie, as I unloaded the dishwasher and prepared breakfast for my boys and myself, I wept uncontrollably.
You see much of our attitudes towards life is ego-centered, this know-it-all, waiting for the world to conform to our false beliefs or self-pity. Or it can be making ourselves small, giving others too much cred-it. That's also known as co-dependency.
I wept because I was humbled. I learned something wise: I have no business in trying to alter the past.
The past was God's business, not mine. The only thing I can do is learn from it. Things were meant to be the way they turned out. Bold statement. I know, but true. Life happened.
The villain in the movie was a controlling grandfather who thought discipline and order, were the most important things for the next generation. As a result, his three daughters and son-in-law were eventually killed. This was a product of the grandfather's rigid views.
At the end, it was the grandson and the villagers who helped the grandfather remember how kind and revered he was by the villagers before he began projecting and coercing his children to take on his false beliefs, forcing his family into an alternate reality.
The grandfather was lost in the world of spirits and did not want to return to hu-man suffering, but he did return with the help of the mortals. We can't avoid human suffering or erase it. It's a part of our human story.
However, we can help each other along the way.
When we express our feelings and are open and receptive, we may be helped and supported. We may be able to help others along the way.
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Thank you, Pablo. God bless you.
-Tony
I love this stuff, too. Thank you for your share. I re-read a book I interestingly found at a used bookstore, on New Year's Eve.
I was familiar with it years ago. It's a small thin book with 88 small pages. It comes with a strong message. The book is called Practicing Peace in Times of War, written by a Buddhist monk.
The answer is to be able to wait and abide with that subtle uneasiness, edginess, restlessness, or threatening energy in our gut.
To have the courage to look for the more ten-der heart underneath the threat.
What does this have to do with the post, "Expressing Feelings?" We're too quick when we react with judgments. Instead of saying "I feel life is exciting," perhaps what I want to honestly say is that "I feel excited to be alive."
Or I feel grateful for how exciting life is right now or how chal-lenging it is because it's teaching me something.
This leads into another theme I have been contemplating. It is appreciating things that weren't so rosy, especially our past.
I got up at 6:30 this morning and watched a movie that unexpec-tedly brought more understanding and appreciation for life. After the movie, as I unloaded the dishwasher and prepared breakfast for my boys and myself, I wept uncontrollably.
You see much of our attitudes towards life is ego-centered, this know-it-all, waiting for the world to conform to our false beliefs or self-pity. Or it can be making ourselves small, giving others too much cred-it. That's also known as co-dependency.
I wept because I was humbled. I learned something wise: I have no business in trying to alter the past.
The past was God's business, not mine. The only thing I can do is learn from it. Things were meant to be the way they turned out. Bold statement. I know, but true. Life happened.
The villain in the movie was a controlling grandfather who thought discipline and order, were the most important things for the next generation. As a result, his three daughters and son-in-law were eventually killed. This was a product of the grandfather's rigid views.
At the end, it was the grandson and the villagers who helped the grandfather remember how kind and revered he was by the villagers before he began projecting and coercing his children to take on his false beliefs, forcing his family into an alternate reality.
However, we can help each other along the way.
When we express our feelings and are open and receptive, we may be helped and supported. We may be able to help others along the way.
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Thank you, Pablo. God bless you.
-Tony
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