I want you to know

Sometimes I do writing meditations. I ask my inner wisdom to speak and share what’s important. In this time of short days, cold nights, and hibernation, internal work is embraced. Using the prompt Here’s what I want you to know, I’ll share what came through in hopes these words might inspire you as well.

This is it. The big one, the one chance, the N.O.W.… No Other Way. Speak truth. Your truth only helps if it’s said with respect for other ideas. How you say something makes all the difference. How much thought you put into it before opening your lips directly corresponds to what can be digested, internalized, considered, and possibly adopted as part of a larger family of ideas, dogmas, and ways to move through this tumultuous, troubled world.

I want you to know yourself honestly with necessary, nourishing truth. I want you to share that truth in every way possible. Let it all out, expose what was hidden, kept safely away and protected from criticism. Hope is alive as long as there are people brave enough to push past angry scowls and pasted-on smiles of reverence and blind faith.

Open your borders, allow those in who are not like you. Who do not share your life experience and views embraced because of your past. It’s not about pigment, it’s about the past and how it shaped you, others, this country, and the world. How you reach out makes all the difference. You may be afraid, or sure your words won’t make a difference. But they do, they will, they must. Sheep will run off the cliff if the dogs push them there. Learn to speak to them. Listen to their bleating fears, and desire for safety. You are no different.

Remember what a view of our planet from space reveals. It lacks individual ideas or challenges, or stories. It reveals oneness, the blues and wispy whites of moving clouds swirling and dropping rain on the thirsty and the drenched. Look at your own life from a distance. Look at other lives from a distance and you will see clearly and hopefully reach yourself and others.

The end of the year marks another journey around the sun. Earth can’t stop moving, but you can. Just for a moment, reflect.

What have you learned? What have you completed? Who have you reached, helped, soothed? When you look down from a distance on the past year, what fills your heart? Do you feel regret, gratitude, peace? If you’re blessed with another year, what will you continue? What was left undone? What can you do on your tiny speck of earth that will bring joy, or sustenance or renewal. What wrong will you work to right? What heart will you help to heal?

I watch with eager eyes to see the goodness you will give in the coming year.