tapestry

Today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. If you are conscious at all today you will most likely be barraged with news and reminders of that day 40 years ago. My mind this morning immediately went to “how old was I”. The answer is 12 years old. Quickly I thought about who I was at 12, and I would suspect I was free. I already had what King and the country was hoping for. The question came to me, when did I loose that freedom, and I would say the day I took my first drink, which would have been 3 years later at the age of 15. For the next 25 years I was a slave to alcohol. It was my master, my lover, my companion. And in that we all know there is no freedom.

So what happens to us when we really begin to work at our recovery? Freedom does come, and interestingly enough it has a price tag as well. But the price we pay for our work on our path will net life, and not assassination. The price is one of time invested in meetings, pages that are expired on a journal or relationships that need to be let go of.

Today I invite you to ask what you are paying for, are you paying for freedom or are you moving closer to your own death. What I have learned is that moving toward our own death doesn’t just have to be through our addiction, but we can get so far away from our divine purpose in this life that we are slowly dying.

Are you free today????

We are beginning to hear the sounds of spring here in the mountains. Yesterday as I was walking around the property where I live I heard birds that were chirping to remind  others of where the sunflower seeds are.  As I listened to them yesterday and again this morning I thought about the patterns in life. How do the birds know to return to the same location for food, how are they drawn to my particular feeder when there are many others to choose from. That of course brings me to the title of this post, Patterns.

I have recently been a part of an man’s life and transition from a place of comfort and knowing. What became apparent as he tried to start his new life is that he was falling back into a habitual pattern, a place he had been before. Kind of like the ground hog day experience. The only thing that had changed in this situation was the location, the people and the place. There was a common denominator in his journey, and that was him. As we discussed the pattern he was able to realize that until the pattern was unraveled and examined and some important questions asked he would most likely do it again.

It reminded me of the moment that I realized that so much of my life and the chaos that seemed to come my way was because of the way I kept going back to the same  feeder and singing the same songs, just like the birds I heard yesterday. So as you think about spring wherever you are right now what are you noticing about your patterns, are you repeating something you have done before, choosing a relationship you have been in before or responding to something in a new way. The birds and other animals need certain patterns to survive and at times we think we do as well. I would invite you to look deeply into what you return to and why.