Believe

Hello my friends! Happy Sunday! As always, I am very grateful to be here with all of you this morning and also very grateful to have attended our Church Thanksgiving Dinner last night to celebrate with my Church family….I love being able to bring my kids and I know they love it too!

So here we are….just a few days away from Thanksgiving and gratitude is on everyone’s minds. Have you ever noticed, that there seems to be an extra push to express gratitude this time of year given it is, after all, the basis of Thanksgiving. For any of you with school age children you have probably noticed, or maybe not, that November is pretty much the only month of the year when gratitude is taught or discussed in school, mostly due to Veterans Day and of course, Thanksgiving. I think it was pretty much the same for all of us growing up and I am sure most of us have some childhood memory of participating in a Thanksgiving project centered around Gratitude.

As many of you know, I was raised Italian Catholic, I went to Catholic School and was quite literally forced to attend Church every single weekend…..yet the only time we ever said grace before a meal was on Thanksgiving day, which I somehow always found amusing. Unfortunately old habits die hard and I am embarrassed to admit, it’s still the the only time I say grace before a meal!

Don’t get me wrong, my mother always taught us to be grateful for what we had and I do the same with my kids, and personally I have learned the benefit or practicing gratitude daily, but there is just something about Thanksgiving, I mean besides the obvious of course. It’s almost as if people become completely immersed in the energy of gratitude, even those that don’t normally express gratitude somehow feel compelled to do so at Thanksgiving….and that in and of itself is a blessing….it is light energy.

As I was preparing for today, I noticed a friend’s FB post, which of course I shared… It was a video of positive quotes or affirmations and you had to screenshot it to see your message, I know some of you know the post I am talking about…mine message was “Appreciate your blessings” and I thought wow, the timing couldn’t have been better…. Divine timing as they say.

I’m guessing at some point in your life, you have experienced the energy of gratitude or have taken a moment to appreciate your blessings….. to experience that sense of peace and contentment, the overall feeling of satisfaction that extends from your head to your toes. The energy that fills you with a warm fuzzy sensation!

I invite each of you to take a brief moment now to acknowledge something you are grateful for and to bask in this feel good energy……now commit that feeling to memory because the day after Thanksgiving we awake to Black Friday…..and it begins….the chaos of the holiday season.

Do I have any Black Friday shoppers here? Fortunately online sales make life so much easier today, but for years, I was one of those people that woke super early on Black Friday and drove all over the place chasing the sales..and I can honestly tell you, those feelings of gratitude quickly dissipated.

Of course this got me thinking….how can we go from this warm fuzzy feeling of gratitude into the black hole of the holiday season? And that’s the fun part about agreeing to speak at Church….it gives us the opportunity to sit, think, process and most importantly listen….listen to what spirit has to say and then allow spirit to guide the lecture in a completely different direction than where you thought you were going!

The Holidays are bittersweet for many, and for various reasons. It seems Christmas is on the top of that list. I started to think about what makes Christmas stressful to so many and then decided I needed some professional opinions…..so of course, I once again turned to Facebook…because we all know, there you will find the answers to all that you seek!

I posted the following question : What do you find most stressful about the holiday season? (for all of you who responded bet you didn’t know you were part of my experiment) Not surprising at all, the responses included everything I also find stressful about the holidays…and in no particular order:

Parties: whether you are hosting or attending, each comes with its own stress which could include cooking/cleaning or simply facing an endless array of food and alcohol which can be difficult for those trying to remain in diets or for people who have faced challenges with alcohol, especially when coupled with the rest of the items on this list

Shopping and Spending Money, the commercialism of the holiday, trying to make everything perfect for everyone; trying to find the perfect gift…often this presents challenges for those with financial difficulties…unfortunately we live in a very “give me” society with a focus on expensive brand names and even more expensive technology. The pressure for many of trying to keep up with friends/neighbors and having the latest and greatest of everything

And finally what seems to be one of the most stressful aspects of the holidays, the grief associated with our loved ones in spirit.

Of course there were also a few of you, not naming any names, Adrienne and Marci, who threw off my experiment and said that nothing about the holiday season was stressful!

But for the most part, the more I read that post, the more sadness I felt at the heaviness of the energy around what is supposed to be a time filled with magic and wonder. After all, this is the time of year when we use words such as peace, hope, joy and most importantly, BELIEVE. Those that celebrate Christmas, BELIEVE..we believe in the birth of Jesus, we believe in the magic and miracles of Christmas, we BELIEVE in messages delivered by angels, we BELIEVE in stars to guide us on our journey…… yet we allow the stress associated with our desire to make everything perfect or our financial challenges, or social obligations to burden rather than elevate our energy….

Many of us stand up here at different times of the year and talk about living in the moment, that the past is history. Although I always strive to live in the moment, as I approach the holidays, the first thing that comes to my mind are traditions, ones that originated in my family generations ago and have been honored for many years, ones that were significant to my mom and my grandmother….and therein lies the paradox….how can I live in the moment by implementing traditions from the past. As Spiritualists, we want everyone to know what we know, what our 4th and 5th principles state: We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue after the change called death and We affirm that communication with the so-called dead is a fact, scientifically proved by the phenomena of Spiritualism.

Two of my closest friends recently lost their Dads and are now faced with the challenge all of us have faced or will face and that is…. how to survive that “first” holiday…that feeling of being torn between the desire to continue the holiday traditions or get on a plane and skip the holidays altogether! I remember that same feeling many years ago when I lost my mom, but somehow tradition won…and despite the fact that tradition is rooted in the past, I somehow always felt very present. As I try to find words of comfort for my friends and also understand the peace I have felt by continuing tradition, despite the obvious paradox, I turned to spirit for some insight….and here is what I was told…..

BELIEVE. Your loved ones in Spirit are next to you always, just in a pure state of energy or their spirit form, you know that already…. You (and by YOU we mean the collective you) can feel their presence, often times you hear their voice, maybe you even see them out of the corner of your eye, possibly even smell their perfume or cologne, maybe even the smell of a cigar or other familiar scent. By following tradition and honoring your loved ones in the Spirit World, you are bringing forth their energy to the present moment. Just as you call in spirit when doing message work, you are calling your loved ones to join you for your festivities. Think of each tradition as a gift from spirit, wrapped in a nice little package with a pretty ribbon, that gets delivered to you from the other side, year after year (the gift that truly keeps on giving) and you get the joy of unwrapping that present every year! You have now unwrapped a memory, in the present!

BELIEVE. Your loved ones are by your side gleaming with pride as you unwrap their gift to you, the tradition, the memory that contains the combined energy of all your ancestors that participated in that same tradition, generations of energetic imprints on that memory, a piece of them, merging with a piece of you, in the present moment, year after year, each year adding more to that energetic imprint, the smiles, the joys, the love that the tradition has brought in the past and continues to bring today.

BELIEVE. The traditions you implement today are another way spirit communicates with you in the present moment. When you expose your children, family, friends to these traditions, your ancestors have the opportunity to connect and communicate with you and them.

BELIEVE that others will be able to experience the energy of your ancestors through these traditions as they are implemented in the present.

Thank you spirit for those words of wisdom…..I’m must admit….I’m still not sure I fully understand it, but I know that it makes me feel good to read it.

But for now, I want to solve all your other holiday stresses…..if only it were that easy right…well I believe it actually is that easy if we remember first and foremost that everything is energy….including our thoughts and words

As I mentioned previously, the energy around my facebook post began feeling heavy, and soon everyone started complaining…it was like I opened Pandora’s box! So I quickly had to change the energy….I did another post and asked what people found most enjoyable about the holiday season:

Not surprisingly again, some people found that the things that caused them the most stress were also the things they found most enjoyable and actually typed the exact same thing on both posts, confirming once again that the ENERGY you put behind the words, behind your thoughts, can in fact change the way you feel about it!

Responses included:

Food/Drink/Parties/Cooking/Entertaining

Being with Family/Friends

Watching children on Christmas Morning

Hallmark Christmas Movies

Christmas Tree/Decorations

Giving and Receiving presents

Christmas Music

The feeling

Did you feel how much lighter the energy was as I read that list. Sort of brought a smile to your face, put you in the Christmas mood a little….maybe some of your mouths even started watering just thinking about those delicious holiday meals!

I may not have the right words for anyone that feels overwhelmed by the holiday season, but maybe you only need to hear someone tell you, “You got this” and so I am here today to say just that….”you got this!” I BELIEVE in you, even if you are having a difficult time believing in yourself. Many of us here in this sanctuary believe in you too”

I will also say this…..remember the energy you put behind your words and actions this time of year. Don’t waste precious energy comparing yourself to others. Remember that anything you do or give in love, will be received in love. Each day, before you leave your home and venture into the perceived chaos, take a moment to surround yourself in a bubble of protective light and fill that bubble with gratitude (remember that feeling from earlier), gratitude for the people in your life celebrating the holidays with you (both in physical and spirit form), gratitude for your ability to choose to see, hear, smell, taste and experience the joy of the holiday season. Fill that bubble with trust, trust that the universe will provide for you in more ways than one, trust in the abundance of the universe, trust in the goodwill of others, trust in yourself. Fill that bubble with wonder, the same wonder we see in the eyes of our children this time of year, wonder for miracles that happen everyday in our lives, wonder at all the sparkly lights and beautiful decorations. Fill that bubble with peace.

I’d like to conclude with one of mother’s favorite prayers, the Prayer to St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. “O Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Thank you