» Love http://www.miraclesandgrace.com Tue, 31 May 2011 19:42:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 FRIENDSHIP’S AMAZING GRACE http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/friendships-amazing-grace/ http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/friendships-amazing-grace/#comments Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:22:59 +0000 admin http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/?p=248 Grace can come in many forms, but is especially welcome in the form of our friends. For many years I have had a friend with whom I would go into and out of touch. A couple of years ago she re-entered my life as a consultant in my business at a very difficult time for me. I was hitting the wall in my life. After having had many wonderful spiritual experiences in my youth, I had turned toward the world, raised a family, and built a very profitable, but stressful and personally unrewarding, business. My life was as dry as the Sahara desert; my marriage was gradually disintegrating, my kids had grown and gone. My life had no center, no well of joy, no touchstone for my soul. When she reappeared in my life, in August of 2006, my friend was very valuable in completing a long-postponed project; but what she brought to the table, more than her tremendous intelligence and ability, was a great big heart. A few months after coming to work with me she met a spiritual teacher in Maui; she asked me if I wanted to come and meet her also. I was unimpressed, thinking that I already knew pretty much everything there is to know about spirituality, and everything else. Her energy, though, was intoxicating, and as I watched her transform over the next year, I began to wonder if life might still have light, and possibility.

In the midst of this, a little over a year ago my wife of 28 years gently but firmly asked me to leave. At the same time, my business began to fall apart. I felt myself slipping into a place where my life, regardless of how many years were left, was feeling over. But my friend, in her gentle, and very persistent, way, kept asking me to come to Maui to meet her teacher. Finally, last April, I came, and I found myself truly reborn. I moved to Maui in July, and I began to live my life in a very different way. I appreciate the grace in each moment for the first time in many, many years. I have an opening heart, and a very wise and wonderful spiritual teacher from whom I learn something every day.

It was my friend’s grace and love that brought me here. It was a miracle that she re-appeared in my life when she did, and a bigger miracle that she had the grit and the tenacity to bust through the wall I’d built around my heart and get me to wake up and live life again.

Richard–Maui, Hawaii

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]]> http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/friendships-amazing-grace/feed/ 0 MIRACLE IN A TEAR http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/miracle-in-a-tear/ http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/miracle-in-a-tear/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:15:03 +0000 admin http://www.miraclesandgrace.com/?p=215 Fire In My Vein
The needle, the flash of blood
Inject –
Feelings of ecstasy, power
Inhibition completely dissolves.
I am at the mercy of a synthetic compound
Over stimulated pleasure centers
Flooded with dopamine.
I am hyper alert, energetic, fearless
Addicted to the “feeling”
But numb to the devastation
Mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The need for the “feeling” fuels my addiction
Yet the fire in my vein
Reeks havoc on my body –
Gray skin, sunken cheeks, darting eyes
Weight loss of thirty pounds –
Little more than a shell – “existing”
Empty – searching – lonely Isolation, shame.
The fire in my vein – creating the illusion
Of power and confidence – yet
All the while creating a dependence
On a “feeling” – artificially induced
By the fire in my vein.
The shadows ever so subtly obscuring the Light
Creeping closer to the edge – the precipice – I teeter
Life and death – the fire in my vein demands more!
I gaze into the mirror and see only remnants
Of what I used to be – a shell
A tear lands on my cheek – HOPE!
The fire in my vein demands more –
Another tear falls – LIGHT!
I drop the syringe –
I see like I have never seen before
Beyond “physical” – my spiritual essence –
LIGHT – flickering – waiting only to be fanned,
Igniting purpose and passion, creating LIFE,
Immersed in LOVE.
I have never again picked up a syringe
I have no need of the fire in my vein
For a fire has ignited in my soul
Fueled by the desire to live purposefully…
And love passionately!

David –Grand Rapids, Michigan is a former addict and IV drug user.

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