Blessings and Challenges are right in there with New Year Resolutions. When I found my list from about five years ago I took another look at them.

I wrote down my three Blessings  and they were as follows:

1 The Blessing of the Dreams and Humor within that work.

2. The Blessing of Meditation and Yoga. (Reading Saint Teresa of Avila works at that time and learning more about Kundalini Yoga with Siri Amrita). 

3. The Great Outdoors and Games including Gesture and Quiddler among other games. And the UNO game played with kids and in West Virginia in the mountains with Ryan and family.

My three Challenges have not changed much either:

1. That I forget my job is to see God in others. I can do this by praying for each person I see, or think about, or am mad at, or irritated with or love. I can see what God might want me to say in a given moment to be in the moment rather than nice.

2. To see the moonlight up and down the back bone, to feel the straightening and strengthening of  back even as I hunch over my computer. 

I am sitting in the same place of forgetting to see God in others, although sometimes I see a photo of someone and know she is one I need to see God in. And when I say daily the “Our Father” or the “Lord’s prayer,” as some call it, and come to the line about “Forgive us our debts as, as we forgive our debtors” I actually call forth a few I am struggling with for some foolish reasons of my own and put a blessing on them especially.

I am doing a little better with the back bone, as I have prayers that go up and down the back bone, as I say them. I especially am paying attention to this, as my knees are redone and I am setting up my whole body differently, as I walk and sit and lie and as I exercise for the knees. 

I get deep tissue massage, osteopathy treatments and acupuncture treatments and I use castor oil packs, epsom salt packs etc to heal my knees. Sometimes it feels like a full time job and other times I feel the freedom of the new knees, a slow moving miracle.

I do not want to continue in the mode and feeling I am a sick person, not able to walk and it is easy to focus on what is wrong on an ongoing basis. So I am going to the gym and I am walking. I promise to write and work and enjoy my life as much as I can and leave the rest behind.

I would like to add to the above that this year I started reading the Bible in the early spring. I am almost up to the new Testament. I do pages every day and do a catch up if I miss. Sometimes I write a passage down and learn it off and take it into the daily meditation. 

Loosely pulled from Isaiah 45, I have been fascinated with this passage for the last three months. I particularly liked the reference to “Treasures of Darkness and hidden riches of secret places.” It is addressed to Syrus, a King but I have adapted it for myself as follows: 

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed, Rose, whose right hand have I, God, been holding. To subdue the nations of Rose’s ego before her; and I, God will loose the loins of the kings of her selfishness, to open before her the two leaved gates, setting her free, and the gates shall not be shut.

I, God will go before, Rose, and make the crooked places straight, I, God, will break in pieces the gates of brass, blocking her way,  and cut in sunder the bars of iron of her stony heart and throat. 

And I, God, will give Rose the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that Rose mayest know that I, the Lord, which call her by her name, Rose, am her God.

I have even called Rose by her name: I have surnamed her, though Rose have not know me.

I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God besides me.I girded her with the clothes of Spirit freely available to her, though Rose hast not known me.” 

I am also reading (again) Harmon Bro’s book on Edgar Cayce and Dreams. I get it that I do not take that work half serious enough. I can get all kinds of help through paying attention to my dreams. I have to dally pay attention enough to the dream space to see them as impressions directly from God. “I girded her with the clothes of Spirit freely available to her, though Rose hast not known me.” This year I intend to get to know God through the impressions left on my by my dreams.” I intend to help others do the same. 

I neglected to go to the dream directly this morning, but when I did I saw blue and white stripes over there on the left and they were on someone and that someone was on a chair. The blue and white of Mary is nearby and I want to get closer to her too.

I hope you too will find your dreams and write them down and think about them and find their message, so you can sit into that impression God sends you every night. Granted you might need a little help from a group or a counsellor, and I am gearing up to continue with this work and do some dancing, as I seem to have started in my dream. I look forward to hearing from you. 

All the best from Rose Marie.