Remember that you are tired of learning. You are tired here, after your climb. You simply want to rest and have whatever transformation is to come to you to come. If you could indeed give in to this desire fully, it would speed the transformation along quite nicely. So please, listen to your weariness and to your heart’s desire to rest. Listen to the call to peace and let yourself recline in the embrace of love, feeling the warm earth beneath you and the heat of the sun above you. Let languor enfold you and apply no effort to what you read here. Just accept what is given. All that is being given is the helpful hints you have desired from an older brother who has experienced what you, as yet, have not. (D:Day5.20)

I have been feeling like I’m running on empty lately. The other day I did a radio interview. It was lovely. Very conversational. No stress at all. But at its end I felt so tired. I saw my brother Ray not long afterward and he could even tell I was tired! So I told him I’d done an interview. He’s an investigator and he said, “When I have to testify, I’m tired the rest of the day and the next day too.” In a family that doesn’t understand what I do, I felt so good about him telling me that. So good about that sense that, on some level, he understood.

The word testify is even kind of interesting.  Here are some of its definitions:

to make a statement based on personal knowledge or belief: bear witness;
to serve as evidence or proof;
to express a personal conviction;
to make a solemn declaration

No matter how casual and conversational these interviews, I’m asked about my experience. I talk of it often quite simply, emphasizing the humanity of it, as is my way. But even writing a blog—any time we “put something out there” what is shared can have about it some of that “testifying” energy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just is as it is.

I began this latest interview with Caroline Chang, talking about my age and how I can see things differently now; I can look back and see how one thing led to another; how perfect really, it all was. But I could as easily have talked of how my age seems to add to my decline in energy. I mean, I’m only 61, and people who are decades older are probably getting a laugh out of me about now, but I’m adjusting to feelings that are different than they were a few years ago. A lot different.

But then, so is my life. I’ve been feeling a little pressure lately. Pressure here. Pressure there.

So, I laid down on the bed in my grandson Henry’s room one night to watch his TV. I brought a J.Jill catalogue and an envelope from Pathways of Light with me. J.Jill didn’t take me more than a minute to go through but Pathways “Miracles News” held me for a good while. I opened to see Rev. Mary Gerard Lenihan’s face in a little square attached to an article. I met her in St. Louis earlier this year and found her to be very kind. It was the only time I experienced an “ACIM” type of challenge as I’ve been out speaking, and she stood up and did what I thought of as “rescuing me.” So I am invested right away in seeing what she has to say and could almost have cried as she spoke of “A nagging unworthiness, a not good enough, not getting enough done” energy that she called an “internal rut.” Then I read one by Rev. Carly Glasmyre who shared a feeling of embarrassment. She was on a weekly study group call and a member of the group helped her more than she helped the group. Rev. Myron Jones, whom I met at the NY ACIM conference, spoke of a shift from her: “I do, I fix, I work” goal setting ways, to a way of watching. “I watch Myron,” she wrote.

I felt so comforted.

Why is this? Why is it that we need this kind of honest sharing? I feel like I used to do it more than I have lately. I thought of writing these women to thank them but I didn’t do it. At least not yet.

It’s a sometimes complicated business to feel what you feel and let yourself rest, or to deal with something like feelings of pressure. Me? I want to “get it done.” That’s how I’ve always dealt with pressure. Just get it done. Then the pressure will be gone!

Now, like these women, I need to find a new way. A kinder, gentler way.

At the moment, I’m sticking with (or coming around to) acceptance. This has been a pretty difficult thing for me, to simply accept when I need to rest. To respect my body as well as my spirit! That I did so and found these women to accompany me feels like a sign. Maybe it’s okay!

Here’s the radio archive link: Awake 2 Oneness Radio:
https://goo.gl/KoiEAS

It’s coming up to October when I’ll be meeting folks in Sedona, Arizona who are reading A Course of Love. October is also the time for my family’s annual jaunt to the tiny river town of Red Wing, Minnesota to view the fall colors and give the kids a night in a hotel with a pool. I got the dates confused when I gave them during the interview. I gave the dates for the trip to Red Wing (10/21) rather than the gathering in Sedona (10/15)! The interviewer was in Pennsylvania so I mentioned that I’d be in Philadelphia in February, but I couldn’t remember the date for that either! Here are those dates. For more info, check the ACOL event page: http://acourseoflove.com/events/

Sedona: October 15, 2016
Philadelphia: Weekend of February 25-26, 2017