Hope, meaning, joy, and love -- all gifts of the Spirit that we spot as we look within at our spiritual journey. May your looking within turn into living it out through love for a hurting world.

It’s time to wake up, whatever that means for you and your journey. If we’ve learned nothing else during these past few months, it’s that life is uncertain, and for the good of the world around us, we can’t keep waiting to do or be what we’re meant to do or be. Wake up! God, and angels, and Love are ready to accompany you each step of the way.

Challenges are difficult, irritating at a minimum, but doorways into awareness of the power of our egoic mind to spin in negativity and unhappiness. They are also wonderful doorways into the experience of God’s amazing and gracious presence within our challenges, for when we are weak, we are strong in God.

I’m feeling like it’s time to be at my best, my most grounded and whole, so that whether my presence is needed in dialogue with others, or in action to help make our global community more livable, just, and life-giving for all, I’ll be ready, engaged, and able to offer my most loving and compassionate self.

Our thoughts, hopes, and dreams for a new world are not meant to replace outer actions, but their invisible, yet powerful presence can aid humanity’s endeavors to create a renewed and more just, loving, and inclusive world, for everyone.

If our inner journey does not lead to increasingly widespread love and inclusion of all people, and all of creation, then its worth is limited to our own comfort and pietistic needs. Jesus’ life and example calls us to a higher standard as we live in community with others.

How fortunate it is for a tree to be planted along a riverbank! Anchored deep into the soil, and with plenty of water to drink, this tree can withstand the most difficult of circumstances. We are that tree, anchored in God. We, too, can stand strong and resilient, bending but not breaking, flourishing and producing delicious fruit.

It takes courage to walk into an uncertain and unknown future. Thankfully, this courage and connectedness -- this ability to walk together in the joys and challenges of life -- is already inside of us through the presence of the always-connecting Divine Spirit.

Our resistance to life creates a constriction in us, both physically and spiritually. We become locked up, and closed off to the present moment -- the moment in which God resides. But our welcoming, our letting go and letting God can create a healing sense of peace, freedom, and an expansiveness which allows new possibilities to arise on our journey.

The Welcoming Prayer reminds us to welcome everything that comes to us in this Moment. We welcome thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions, knowing that the things that come into our hearts, minds, bodies, and daily schedules are in some way meant for our healing, growth, and transformation.