This is a time for reclaiming the land—the Eden of my own consciousness. The world tempts us to find our pleasures within its aching acreage. It floods us with mechanical desires and worthless trinkets of admiration and flattery. And we begin to totter, to falter, eventually to lie face down in the ad(mire).

The briars of this world bleed us out in one way or another. The mechanical mind never ceases to tempt us to work our way out of the current mess (and there is always a mess.) Surrender is just a word in the worldly dictionary.  To actually do it, things must get dire indeed. We must get at least halfway out of the muck before we can realize we are in it.

Then, if we are good spiritual students, we say, “I have created this problem to learn something. I don’t know what it is, but I know who it is. It’s ME. It’s a me-mess. And as you know, often the me-mess becomes a meanness. So in the middle of the mess, we have to repent (turn to the God within.) I call myself a psalmist of the everyday, a singer in the valley.

“Oh, Lord, heal me of my own iniquities,

Calm my pounding heart.

Lead me back home to silence.

There only will I find reconciliation

of my shattered Self.

Let there be a party for my tender lamb-like

Self. May I be served as food for many

and die to the idea that there is anything

but the One.”

~Vicki Woodyard