Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Pompe Strater-Vidal

  • See Every Event as an Opportunity

    This morning I enjoyed listening to Linda Beushaushen Gunter’s sermon, “Life’s Story.” She told the first “version” of her life and then, reporting on the exact same history, another “version.” The first story focused through the lens of things being unfair, difficult, painful. The second told of the same events, but without all of the doom and gloom and blame and shame. She told of having been the eldest child; her mother’s depression; her divorce; her widowhood…. each was seen as rife with opportunity and blessing, shaping her into the servant leader she is today. Her closing quotation from The Tiny Buddha was not attributed to anyone, so we can each make it our own,if we choose:

      In this life we are all just walking up the mountain, and we can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet. Whichever we choose, we still gotta do the hike. I decided a long time ago singing made a lot more sense.

    Yesterday while I was out on a bike ride I received this email message from a dear friend, a loyal reader of Yellow Brick Road. She is someone I have shared a lot about life with.

      I’m trying to get to a good place about all of this, so I again send you my gratitude for all of your election-related YBR posts. Thanks to you, I don’t feel like a loser, but I fear that our beloved country will become one if the Democrats win in the Senate too, allowing what I view as impractical concepts to become the norm. Chuck Schumer announced that Joe Biden will help the US change the world! I’m not ready for that. However, as much as Trump or Biden want/wanted to believe that were/are/will be in charge, I’m comforted that God is our ultimate leader, yes?

    I thought of this friend as I listened to Linda’s sermon, and also when I read Neale Donald Walsch’s daily thought.

      If you were thinking rightly you could not possibly
      imagine that anything was going ‘wrong.’ You would
      know that nothing in the Universe is working against
      you. By definition, given Who You Are, this is impossible.

      Move, then, to gratitude when you encounter your
      frustrations. And see every event as an Opportunity.

    I posted “Why Cycling Can Make You a Happier Person” on the Imagine Healing Facebook page yesterday before I went on my ride. Truth be told, love of cycling is probably my strongest pull to snow-birding. Cycling is good exercise. It gets me out in nature. To stay safe cycling you really do have to be mindful. From the article:

      Within 10 minutes of being on a bike, things that are immediately worrying you – that piece of work you haven’t finished – have been dismissed. Ride for 45 minutes and you hardly know what you were thinking about and then something else drops in – a line from a poem or something your child said.

    While cycling yesterday, that happened! Something profound opened up to reveal the structure of the universe. I saw EVERYTHING! And everything is unfolding in divine order.

    I sobbed telling my sister, Janis, about my experience, and she kept saying, “You had an epiphany….”

    Now the epiphany is similar to the way dream images vanish upon waking where the details are no longer clear but you totally recall having had the experience. The most I can articulate right now is that we are all playing roles, each contributing to the divine unfolding. Some are moving out into the change, some are leaning back to the familiar — together all of it balancing our progression.

    I had an epiphany….

    I could see with a different understanding the experience I had had in Europe in 2011 where options would close or open depending upon my inner state.

    A wave of profound appreciation came over me for my brother-in-law’s having broken the water line installing the new sink in the guest bath. Sure, finding the mold and facing the expense of remediation meant going through all of the frustration, but now John is healthy!

    Frances Newton said “I can stand what I know. It’s what I don’t know that frightens me.” Our central nervous systems react poorly in the face of the unknown. Fear of the unknown, often referred to as free-floating anxiety, catches up to us on occasion. But it needn’t. Pompe Strater-Vidal has some great guided meditations you can enroll in for free at Relax Breathe Flow to help you.

    We can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet.

      The path forward may sometimes be unclear. And it may be messy. But the shared heart is calling, and we have an opportunity to make lasting shifts toward love and justice in our world.

      ~ Kristi Nelson


    Photo of Lake Michigan by Kathy Kreager, used with permission.

  • Forgiveness and Loving-kindness

    This morning I was catching up doing “Day One” of Pompe Strater-Vidal’s 11-Day Meditation Challenge on the 4 aspects of Immeasurable Mind, Loving Kindness, Compassion, Equanimity and Joy, that started yesterday. The message on loving-kindness practice was about how you have to begin by loving and being kind to yourself. I was directed to identify something that I do well, a trait of mine that I appreciate. (You may want to play along with me as you read this and identify right now a trait of yours that you appreciate.)

    The trait I identified was sharing freely of my professional skills/knowledge with people that I meet, such as I had done a few days ago with a young woman in the waiting room when I went to have an X-Ray of my back and hip.

    The woman volunteered that she was really uncomfortable, needing to urinate. I told her I was sure they had a restroom in this area, as I had not noticed she was pregnant. She went on to say that she was waiting to have an ultrasound so she could not go until after and the baby was kicking. She said she had always loved feeling the baby kick, because she had previously experienced a miscarriage. At this time, the kicks were very uncomfortable due to her full bladder.

    I told her how she could place her hand on her abdomen and tell her baby she normally loves feeling the kicks but right now they are uncomfortable and it would be very helpful for there to be no kicking until after the ultrasound. I shared about when I guided our daughter to ask our granddaughter to wait to be born until they could get her room ready. Courtney ended up being induced!

    I gave the woman a free download card for my “Welcome Baby!” audio designed for listening during pregnancy, preparing for labor and delivery.

    This morning as soon as I remembered the interaction with this expectant mom, suddenly I had a cellular memory of having been in Europe in 2011. On the climb down from visiting the Montségur Monument, we saw an expectant couple. I struck up a conversation, found out they were from the US and were having their first baby. As I remember it, the woman I was traveling with was very critical of my sharing with them about “Welcome Baby!”. She said it was rude and selfish and inappropriate to have an unsolicited conversation with them and then tell them about the “Welcome Baby!”audio.

    As soon as I accessed this memory from Europe, I had another simultaneous awareness of a time I had been punished when I was innocent. I was in third grade. The student sitting behind me tapped me on my back asking for help. She was having difficulty sight reading a word in her book. My guesses were very far off sounding out “Can-oh-wee” and “Can-ow” until I put the word into context. When I realized the word was “canoe” she and I both collapsed into a fit of giggles. All our teacher saw at that moment was me, turned around leaning over the other student’s desk, and the two of us laughing.

    We were called up front and we both got paddled. To add insult to injury, I was paddled with the paddle I had brought in for the teacher so she could paddle the boys for being bad.

    Today I know the core of forgiveness and loving-kindness waiting all these years to come into my innocent heart is my own sense that the boys deserved to be paddled.

    I opened my email to read this:

    Today’s thought from the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

    We can practice forgiveness each day.

    Resentments have a way of creeping back into my psyche even after I have let go of them. I know that holding a grudge is harmful to my emotional health and can threaten my abstinence, but what can I do when I keep feeling anger toward someone?

    In the interest of recovery, in my own best interest, I can continue to forgive each day. I may not be able to forgive the person once and for all, but I can do it right now, just for today. With practice, who knows? Perhaps the resentment will disappear.

    When I remember that my own track record is far from perfect, I realize I could use some daily forgiveness too, both from others and from myself. True forgiveness reaches across time and touches everyone.

    Just for now, I can let go of resentments and forgive. If resentments come back, I can forgive again.
    You are reading from the book:

    Inner Harvest by Elisabeth L.

    I do not have permission to reprint this quotation from Inner Harvest, so I ask forgiveness from Elisabeth L.for sharing it.