Sunday journal, 680 words

I love to meet people who have a stored up radiance. When I walk into their presence, I feel all the good they've loaded into their energy fields over a lifetime of good works and kindness. It's like setting a rock out in the sun during the day and then using it to warm yourself in the cold night. They're my warm rocks.

A black minister came over to my table and asked if I'd drop by his church and talk to some children he was trying to keep off drugs and out of trouble. It so happened I was sitting there with a man who had been so addicted to alcohol he had lived for years in the woods, sleeping under dry cleaning bags.

I asked him if he would talk to the children and he said he had never done anything like that but he was willing to try to fulfill his pledge to do all in his power to keep people off booze. As he talked, the restless children became still, transfixed by his words. Tears were streaming down the minister's face. And mine.

In my journal that night I wrote, "Today, I stood on holy ground."

Those who tell people to forget their painful times are setting them up for disappointment. We cannot forget the fires we walk through. As Sandburg said, "People are what they are because they have come out of what was."

We can remember "what was" without wallowing in it. We can be grateful we "have come out."

That's remembering without wallowing.

When we can't forgive, we should not lie to ourselves and say we have. But is there a grander prayer than when we ask for the grace to be able to forgive?

One thing that helps me get to that point is to remember some of the things for which I have asked forgiveness. If I have the audacity – and thank God I do – to ask forgiveness for things I'd give anything to be able to erase from my mind, surely I can ask for the grace and strength to be able to forgive others.

What a dream I had the other night! I was in heaven and an angel-like man was showing me around. He kept saying we would soon reach the room of "the Greats." I thought this would be the saints, people like Mother Teresa and Norman Vincent Peale. But when we finally got to the room, it was full of plumbers and farmers and housewives and average everyday people.

I was stunned and told the angel so. He simply said, "The Greats are simply those who gave their best to whatever they were doing in life."

I awoke with emotional wings. We all have the chance every day to be great.

I love writing a Haiku poems to capture a moment in my day. It's an old Japanese three-line poetic form where there are five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the last line. Here's a sample from my journal:

Try it. It is always a challenge to get it said in seventeen syllables but

the larger benefit is encapsulating a moment.

Sometimes our mental image of someone is so different from the reality. At times, this is disappointing. I remember meeting a big music star who was a consummate, arrogant bore. At times, we have the opposite experience and are lifted by the very presence of someone we had mentally filed in a narrow category.

French artist Jean Cocteau became a great discovery to me. He has a spiritual dimension that is unforgettable. One of the most profound sentences came from him: "Allow the power of soul to grow as fragrant as the power of sex."

What an incredible world we would have if we could bring those two powerful human drives into a harmonious and more equal balance.

-30-