Category: 2021

Exploration: Can chaos be a good thing?

Joe6 Comments

In a “Time Traveler’s Guide to the Universe” workshop that I’m currently taking with Denise Linn, Dr. Brand Fortner, and others, Denise said the following:

“Sometimes for new growth, you need chaos.“

That statement stopped me in my tracks.

I work in the software industry that is in constant flux. New products and strategies are regularly being developed. At times, it feels like I’m perpetually juggling my work. In addition, throughout this whole pandemic, as medical folks learned more about COVID-19, their understanding and guidelines changed, requiring us to make perpetual adjustments to our activities. It’s often felt chaotic and overwhelming. Perhaps you’ve felt the same.

I’ve always viewed being overwhelmed as a bad thing because it felt crappy. In these situations, my focus became re-prioritizing my work and activities, and setting boundaries and expectations about what I could and couldn’t do. The goal was to get over the overwhelmed feeling as quickly as possible. Rather than thinking of those times as something negative, Denise’s statement challenges me to see chaos as a vehicle of growth and therefore positive.

So how might it be positive? Well, as I often equate chaos with feeling out of control, perhaps the growth area is acknowledging, again (<chagrin>) that I don’t control everything. Equally important, though, is viewing the chaos as fertile ground through which new and unexpected opportunities can appear. For much of my life, as a result of feeling unsafe, I became hypervigilant to protect myself. That didn’t leave much space for anything new.

So, Denise’s statement challenges me to let the uncomfortable feeling of chaos be, and invite my spiritual guides and God to plant seeds into that ground to help me grow and expand. Just as the universe expands, as learned from the workshop, so too, I believe that there are more possibilities out there that I can currently conceive.

What do you think? I invite you to post your own thoughts.

Blog Addendum – May 18, 2021

As mentioned elsewhere, my guides and God send messages and support via songs. When I took my daily walk this morning, two songs about living your dreams popped into my head. One from the Greatest Showman musical, and, believe it or not, the other from the Lizzie McGuire movie. The line in the Lizzie McGuire song was “Hey now, this is what dreams are made of.” Reflecting on John Connors’ comments to this blog made me realize that in pursuing your dreams, there may be challenges and perhaps even pain involved. I’m experiencing that now with my job situation. And that’s as much as part of the dream as the successes and synchronicities we experience as we pursue it. Thanks John for your wisdom.

Living your calling at work (4/03/21)

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(a Voice of Justice and a Listening Ear)

In various spiritual workshops, I’ve heard people ask how they can bring their calling or purpose to their job. I’ve struggled with that myself. As I’ve written, I believe that everyone is traveling their own unique path and as such I would never try to convert someone to my beliefs. That’s despite that fact that if you work in a non-religious setting, like the corporate world, there are laws against such.

Yet, since a good portion of your week is spent at your job, you want to bring your whole self to work. How do you do so? It’s simple. Live your calling at its most basic level by being a person of integrity, honesty, responsibility, and empathy.

I know that may not feel like it’s enough and it can be frustrating not to be able to freely and visibly live that calling 24/7. Ideally, we all want a job that reflects our calling and provides a livelihood. But it’s not always easy to find that and most of us don’t have the luxury of quitting our job until that new calling-based job appears.

Over the last many years in the corporate world though, I have seen and experienced times when providing the basics are desperately needed. How many of us have not seen examples of situations where profit is placed before people and where employees are sometimes treated as a liability. During those times, I have felt especially impelled to raise flags, and bring honesty, fairness, equality, and justice to all my interactions. Equally important for me, as a healer, is to provide a listening ear to coworkers who want to share their struggles, hopes, and fears. Simply, asking how they are doing, and truly listening, not offering advice, lets them know that they are seen.

Intuition – touching the divine (3/28/21)

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Towards the end of my meditation this morning, I realized that I wanted to chat with God. In college, I started having daily chats with God and found them very important in getting to know God and myself. For the last couple years, though, I’ve been chatting more with my spirit guides. Simply put, I missed my God chats.

So, after greeting God this morning, I told God that I just wanted to check in. I didn’t have a particular topic to talk about though. However, my casual chat quickly morphed into talking about the confusing messages that God and my guides sent me recently in my dreams. Because aspects of them repeated, I knew they were important but I couldn’t figure them out. I had previously told my guides that if they wanted me to get something, they needed to be clearer. I must also admit that I was worried that I was letting them down.

What I came to understand from God this morning was that these dreams are part of their training of my intuition. While my intuition is developed, it still needs refining and deepening, because I often default to my mind to figure things out. So God was inviting me to let my mind rest and just be open to learning.

As our conversation progressed, I came to understand that through my intuition I am touching the divine. Touching the divine! What a powerful and rich idea. That truly blows my mind, which ironically reflects God invitation. By listening to my intuition, I am connecting to my divine self, my spirit guides, God, and all others in that divine realm. And by living through my intuition, I am truly being with them.  

At the end of the chat, I felt greater attuned to the divine, more grounded, more full and just plain grateful.

Attuning to your experiences (3/20/21)

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I woke up at 4 am last night (the time people sometimes get spiritual messages) hearing a clear message that as I share my understandings, I must always start with sharing how my experiences led to them. What I share is not the result of an intellectual exercise but from tuning into my intuition and feelings about each experience. When I wrote about choosing your incarnation, I focused more on my ideas. So, I wanted to write a bit about the role of experience.

All of my beliefs and understandings are grounded in my experiences. For each, I identify what feelings come up, and what it reveals about me and my place in the world. I also consider if there is something to learn from it, especially in terms of future decisions. While my mind certainly plays a part in understanding my reactions, it is in service to the experience.

Let me give you an example. Some years back, I attended a 10-day therapeutic retreat to help heal some lingering traumas and let go of limiting beliefs. This was after I left the priesthood, still feeling my calling to serve, but unsure about how to live it out. During a session break, after telling the director about this, she took my hands in hers, looked me in the eyes, and said, Joe, you are a spiritual healer. My body, mind, and spirit instantly responded. I felt energized and relieved. I knew, at the deepest level, that that was my calling. That one experience led me to where I am today and creating my website.

Our experiences are the source of what we believe and how we live. As such, I’d invite you to take some time to attune to yours. Reflect on them, and how they shape you and form your beliefs. Then, assess whether they confirm your current direction, call you to make different choices, or even challenge you to try something new. Doing so can lead you to interesting places.

Vatican’s decision about gay unions (3/16/21)

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Yesterday, the Vatican, or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, pronounced that priests cannot bless gay unions because they are considered a sin, as they are not objectively ordered or words to that effect.

As a gay man and a former Catholic priest, I am saddened, a little angry, but not surprised. Growing up Catholic, I was taught that being gay was a sin and intrinsically disordered. As I wrote in my story, pronouncements like that contributed to my low self-esteem, even before I came out. As a priest, it was hard to be part of a church that would not celebrate and honor love between two people of the same sex, whereas time and again, I would see opposite gender couples taking marriage casually.

What further saddens me is that Pope Francis, a pope who has been loving and accepting of gay people, approved of the statement. Again, I say I am not surprised. A number of church teachings, along with theological writings and scriptural interpretation, have led him and others in leadership positions to a narrow view of God, and humanity in relationship to God.

As a gay man, married to a wonderful husband, not only do I not believe that I or my marriage are a sin, I believe they are richly blessed. In fact, having been married for more than two decades now, my relationship with my husband has helped make me a better person. If I had been married while I was a priest, the ministry I did with couples especially would have been so much more rich and real.

To LGBTQ people who choose to remain Catholic, I send you my love and support. Know that you/we are all blessed people, and blessed by God, as we chose to be born into our current lives knowing that we might face discrimination, even from religious leaders who are called to be vehicles of love and acceptance.

Letting someone take care of you (3/6/21)

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You would think that as a healer of the spirit, and dedicated to being of service, that I would have no difficulties letting someone take care of me. Wrong. I feel guilt. Even after years of therapy, it’s not always easy. My guilt comes from a lingering belief that I have to take care of myself and that I have no right to ask others for help because it would inconvenience them.

Recently, I was having radiation treatment on my left hand to lessen the impact of an inherited condition. I was told to avoid hot water for a month. Well, in my family, my husband is the primary cook and I clean the dishes. It’s a bit hard to wash stubborn pots with warm water with one hand. When I told my husband about my restriction, he was fully onboard with washing the dishes and cooking.

For the first few days of the treatment, it was challenging for me to see him doing both. You might wonder why I didn’t take over the cooking. Well, the truth is that I’m not the best cook.

So, what did I do? First, I reminded myself that being in a relationship means letting your spouse care for you when you can’t. I have certainly done that for Michael. So, that helped lessen my guilt. More practically, I realized that there were other things I could do, like putting away the dishes, ironing his clothes, paying our bills, and doing other chores that we normally shared.

Still, I do wonder how I would feel if I couldn’t take on any chores for a time and Michael had to do everything. That could be challenging. One day, I believe I will more fully embrace the fact that love means being able to let others care for you when you can’t do so yourself.

Handling a bad day (2/20/21)

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As a person on a spiritual path, connected with God or your guides, have you ever had a bad day, and felt disappointed and discouraged?

I certainly have. At times I’ve even wanted to climb back into bed and pull the covers over my head. For me, the hardest days are those when I feel like I’m failing in my calling. I look to others who seem to be clearly living out their spiritual calling, and find myself lacking. The key for me is to first remind myself that even though I know who I am, I may still have these days simply because I’m human.

So, when I turn to my guides and God, I don’t look to them to take my feelings away (most times) but to honor, make space for them, and be open to understanding what they mean. Admittedly, during these times, I don’t always feel connected to my guides. But I do try recall those times when I did feel connected and when they did provide guidance and support. That can give me a little hope, and help me look for their help in other ways, through friends, spiritual readings, music, and other media.

Equally important is that I remind myself to do the best I can. For years, as a perfectionist and workaholic in recovery, I pushed myself and judged myself harshly. After having therapy and spiritual direction, I’m gentler with myself. So, on a bad day I try to adjust my plans, find ways to take care of myself, and limit the impact of my mood on others.

Time and again, my guides have reminded me to trust the unknown, and believe that the answers will come. It’s still not always easy but it does take the edge off usually.