The Secret of All Hearts

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The Secret of All Hearts...

The Secret of All Hearts...
is they are one and the same Hearts.

Lord God,
do we understand?
Do we get it?
The Secret of All Hearts is,
they are interconnected.
I am Another You,
and
You are Another Me...
What we sew
we reap,
what we eat,
we wear.*
What we breathe
we share;
What we cast-off
we live in.

Are we getting it, God?


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*from a sermon by Joyce Meyer.

Civil Servant's Heart

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Never be afraid
to show compassion over judgment...

Funny how this tattoo image looks more like something ancient, say, a Grecian Urn? I love the strength and power coming through it, emblazoned by the fiery yellow. This shows a person of intense willpower, a fighter. The sort of person who would wear this image is interested in social justice, exploring ways to help one's self or others fight for their rights at all costs.

The key of course, is about what's going on in the person's heart. If it is vice, chances are efforts will be sabotaged, or backfire. In this case, the person is pushing too hard by being mentally stubborn. So chances are, he or she is running on anger, panic, or defensiveness, and turning people off - shutting them down. People don't listen to panic and defense; they try to take action, or avoid you, instead.

There was a day you really hated someone; but in spite of that, they came through for you.

There was a day you felt betrayed by someone; but later they returned and helped.

There was a time you refused to cooperate, only afterwards realizing, you must change.

The heart is all about taking us out of our attitudes, into a higher vibration.

It's called Law of Attraction.

So, a responsible civil servant has an intimate need for understanding compassion. Judgment is a hard thing to cope with and work through. Sure, we need our private ways of using discretion to keep the nasties from hurting us; but we don't need to be jerks about it. Everyone has to do what they do to put the Scales of Justice back into balance; but if we are confused, lost, irrational, there are people out there to help us. Not everyone is an enemy. Who was the first person to judge? Or was it just a sense or a feeling we were given that blocked the way? Sometimes, when we are not getting compassion, we have to ask for it.

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Dear God, show me the way
to replace my judgment with compassion,
starting with myself.
If I have been walking around in knee-jerk reactions,
easily taking offense to everything going on,
help me rise above the paranoia.
Keep me surrounded by Angels, Dear God,
until I get through this.
Please help to make this passage quick!
Amen.

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Family Heart

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The family heart is a collective of many hearts...

This graphic is called "Heart with Thorns" by Panic Alex...

I feel this image perfectly depicts what it's like to be connected to a family heart. There is a lot of beauty and sentimentality there, interlaced with the thorns of pain and guilt, and anger as well.

We often go through our lives analyzing how useful these emotions are. Sentimentality, for example, can be a perverted emotion; especially if it's only real function in our lives is to keep us enslaved. It's from the family heart that we learn how to give our hearts to others. These are the themes that make family "family".

I especially like the Asian undertones in this image. It reminds me of how some families and individuals are so woven and locked into themselves through obligation and tradition.

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God, help our hearts...
Guide us into directions of finding our
living spirituality,
not through dogma or religious rites,
but through the lessons of our hearts.
Help us to go "through" the corruption we encounter
and not get stuck in it,
or become martyrs or victims for it.
Help us to recognize our free will
as being in-tune with You, Lord,
and set us on the right track
to being whole,
with or without our family, if necessary.


For You have promised us these options and choices,
through Your redemption.
You promise us new life
if we forsake these things
in order to be closer to Your Light.
Help us not to dwell too long
in the darkness of the past.
Help us to come into the Light,
dear Jesus.

Jesus Lives!

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Human Be-In Tribal Heart

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I believe this design was originally intended to represent the "Rainbow People" of traditional American Indian mythology...

Rainbow People are people of all colors and nationalities, coming together with a unified intention to bring healing, peace and love to all living beings. Much of that idealism is coming to the fore today, with our election of President Obama and the changes American want.

Today it is more about getting involved with our world, taking personal responsibility for our actions in a time where there is no excuse for ignorance, blaming or lack of education.

But the general idea of working with diversity has to do with "Being Here Now". In the '60's, Being Here Now was a lot about withdrawing your participation from situations that did not empower you or others, and becoming more present with your "thing", the things you like to do.

The Be Here Now movement was started by a man who called himself Ram Das. Ram Das was also a friend of Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary was a pioneer in using drugs to alter his consciousness... In the same way Native American Indians did their their ancient ceremonies, the hippies of the '60's followed these models of the time.

In the '60's, the idea was all about using consciousness as a way to lift people out from their prejudices and attitudes.

From Wikipedia:

"Turn on, Tune in and Drop Out" is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

The phrase is derived from this part of Leary's speech:

“

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out. I mean drop out of high school, drop out of college, drop out of graduate school... [1]

”

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

“

'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. 'Drop' out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'.

During the era of the hippie culture, more and more people came to identify with the rainbow and it's potential symbolism of bringing diversity together. A very popular way of young adults and groups getting together was to organize gatherings for music, love-in's and Be-In's.

To attend a Be-In might be a meditation circle or a pow-wow where people are invited to bring all their energy into the moment - to "Be Here Now". Be-In's were about creating sacred space, quiet circles of energy where people could share with one another. Of course, in the '60's the counter-culture shared things like drugs, sex, rock and roll.

At meditation groups, people were invited to bring pictures of their saints, gurus, personal heroes and avatars. Children were always welcome, and people collected things to share and trade, like flowers (fresh and dried), beads, flutes, gongs, chimes, feathers, bread, wine, colorful flags, incense, crystals, etc.

These trends also all came around the time of the Stonewall Riot, when gay and lesbian groups also adopted the rainbow as their symbolic light of unity in diversity.


The Stonewall Riot came on full-fledge the night after Judy Garland's death... Judy Garland played Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", and sang the song "Over the Rainbow". Since Judy had many gay and lesbian fans, they wanted to meet in public together to grieve her passage; however they were denied a place to gather, and their grief shortly turned into a riot at a place called Stonewall.

Please feel free to share more what you know here, or find more info about all this on the internet.

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Dear Jesus, please help me to catch on quickly
when someone is being sneaky and not even bothering
to meet me half-way.
Help me to understand and learn...
The differences between privacy, and healthy boundaries,
and outright lying.
Help me Lord, to see through these things right away.
Direct me to the kinds of human bein's I need to "be with"...
People who are present with me,
not holding back on the truth of who they are
or what I need to know,
in order that I can be whole and happy
in sharing myself with them.

Dear God, we all have needs...
Please direct me to the sorts of people
who respect themselves and also respect me.
In Jesus Name, I ask;
Amen.

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"Everybody Wants a Piece of Me" Heart; Obama Inauguration

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Obama Rides through History on Pennsylvania Avenue
Ghosts of Pennsylvania Avenue

The Washington road has been the scene of hate, oppression, possibility and progress. Obama will make the trek past dramatic civil-rights landmarks, and won't stop until he reaches the White House.


By Faye Fiore
10:47 AM PST, January 19, 2009
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON -- When Barack Obama takes his triumphant ride along Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday, he will retrace the path of Ku Klux Klan marches and roll past the ghosts of hotels and movie theaters that used to turn away people like him.


This historic stretch, book-ended by the Capitol on one end and the White House on the other, has witnessed many of the milestones that made an Obama presidency possible. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were signed here.

But it's doubtful that even a Harvard-educated wonder can get his arms around the scope of the civil-rights drama that has played out on this 1.2-mile slice of real estate.

There are places more famous for their scars -- Selma, Birmingham -- but none captures the sweep of the story the way Pennsylvania Avenue does, where laws were passed to enslave people and laws were passed to free them, and at least a dozen of Obama's predecessors would sooner have considered him a piece of property than a peer.

Nearly every president has made this ceremonial trek since Thomas Jefferson did it on horseback. But never has the setting been as connected to the nation's shame as much as its glory.

"That juxtaposition is the way I always think of Pennsylvania Avenue -- a place of great possibility and of great evil," said Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "It is a mirror of change in America."

Obama and his family will ride up the promenade in an armored 2009 black Cadillac limo after he takes the oath of office on Capitol steps built by slaves.

At 3rd Street, the motorcade will pass what used to be the St. Charles Hotel, a popular stop in the early 1800s where slaves were kept in underground cells while their owners enjoyed the luxuries upstairs; reimbursement was guaranteed if any escaped.

"That hotel became a favorite of black patrons after the Civil War," said Charles Cobb, an author and professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

At 4th Street, a block from the hotel that made sure no slave escaped, the new president will pass what used to be the American Colonization Society Hall, founded in 1816 to return emancipated blacks to Africa, an effort fueled in part by whites who believed there was no place in America for a free black community.

Tension between races was inborn for a democracy founded on a contradiction -- 12 of the early presidents were slave holders, eight while in the White House.

From the start, the heart of the nation's capital -- a broad avenue designed by Pierre L'Enfant that was a dusty mess until it became the town's first paved street -- was a place of mixed signals. Some freed blacks operated successful businesses while their brethren continued to be sold off in chains.

While in the White House, President Jackson kept 150 house and field slaves back on his Tennessee farm. It was under his nose one night in 1835, at 6th and Pennsylvania, that a white mob ransacked the Epicurean Eating House and tried to lynch its black owner, a man named Beverly Snow.

Today, just a few doors down, an elegant pink building with twin spires stands as a monument to the civil-rights struggle: The National Council of Negro Women headquarters, purchased with the help of Oprah Winfrey six years ago, is the only black-owned property on this famous stretch.

Inside, Dorothy Height, 96, a lifelong activist and president emeritus of the civil-rights advocacy group, keeps an office.

"No inaugurated president will leave the Capitol to go to his house without passing our house," she likes to say. Known for her trademark hats -- one day last week ti was dusty blue with a big rhinestone-studded bow -- she was preparing to attend a swearing-in ceremony she did not think she would live to see.

"Barack Obama presents a strong symbol of what we have achieved under the hardest conditions," said Height, who won a scholarship to Barnard College as a young woman but was denied admission because of her skin color.

The symbolism is even bolder considering the building is steps from 7th and Pennsylvania, where a teeming market of slaves, penned up in filth and misery awaiting sale, was a lucrative enterprise.

Obama will be halfway to the White House when he passes it. There is little to mark that it even existed. But, according to Bunch, a visiting British writer once noted that the business going on in the Capitol was drowned out by the anguished wails of families being separated and sold.

"We forget, but slavery was so embedded into the American system, it shouldn't be a surprise that slaves were traded within the shadow of the Capitol," Bunch explained.

Slavery was outlawed by 1865, but the inequality persisted. Blacks were barred from jobs, hotel rooms, toilets and restaurant counters. Pennsylvania Avenue led the nation in a dance: two steps forward and one step back.

Franklin Roosevelt opened the war-industry jobs to blacks after he was threatened with a massive march on Washington. Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal workplace to appease his offended wife.

And somewhere along this street, a sailor named Sam Harmon, stationed in Virginia during World War II, was denied admittance to a movie theater when the clerk saw the hand that reached for the ticket was black. He walked the streets that night in tears.

"As you move into the '50s and '60s, Pennsylvania Avenue is reflective of a segregated America," Cobb said. "Black people cooked in the restaurants that served the capital but couldn't eat in them."

For nearly 100 years after slavery was outlawed, Pennsylvania Avenue did little to advance justice. Then in 1964, President Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in hotels, restaurants and department stores. Martin Luther King Jr. stood over his shoulder at the White House.

Four years later, smoke could be seen rising from Pennsylvania at 7th Street when riots broke out as word reached black neighborhoods north of downtown that King had been assassinated.

At 10th Street, Obama will pass within a block of Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. As if in a flurry to honor his legacy, Congress would adopt the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments outlawing slavery, making former slaves citizens and giving black men the right to vote.

One result: Black businessman James Wormley opened the capital's first integrated hotel at 15th and Pennsylvania, a block from the White House.

Obama's ceremonial journey will end at the nation's most famous address -- 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For decades, the windows offered a view of slaves servicing the elegant homes on Lafayette Square.

Today, in that same spot, record crowds will gather -- braving confounding security, epic bathroom lines and biting cold -- to watch Pennsylvania Avenue dance another step forward.

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Everybody wants a piece of me, God!
For a short time, I even get to be a "Rock Star"...
The personal is always political, Lord.
It takes tremendous courage to endure this kind of pressure from people,
but I'm good!
I'm okay!

Help me to help them Get It, God...
It's all about sharing!


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Lady's Heart

The Lady's Heart loves to get all-up in your business. (That's what the birds are for.) That's why she's a little hardened, and maybe, if she's learned some lessons she will also know when to knock-it off, back-off and relax.

We ladies love to embellish ourselves with all sorts of decorations to make ourselves look softer, more approachable and touchable... But deep inside, there's a lot of pain there! Many of us take it right to our graves.

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Dear Lord, help the women of the world to let go
of the things that steal our energy,
are a waste of time, and feel like dead-ends.
Help us women in the world feel more confident
about stepping out of traditional roles
like being mothers, grandmothers...
Nurses, secretaries and baby-sitters.
Sure, these roles are important,
but so are we, individually.


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We have a lot more to give,
starting with giving to ourselves.
Help us to drop our expectations of others
so we can see them for who they truly are.
Help us to follow our true interests,
educations and passions,
so we can be more effective on the planet,
and in the lives of other beings.

Help us to clearly know we have choices, God.


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Help us to understand
we don't have to be reacting,
help us to find our timing
so we are better
at responding.
Help us to keep our egos
from getting all-up-into-it, God!
Help us to keep ourselves
from jerking people around.
Our hearts need more resilience, Jesus,
by being good stewards of our energy,
our value-judgments
and attitudes towards others.
We like to say we are patient, even good to others,
but our egos and our money
are all-up-into-it, God.

Help this heart, our real hearts;
it's about what's going on
inside,
not outside, of who
we are that matters.


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Dear Jesus, protect us from those who would blame
and accuse us, undermine and not communicate with us or defend us.
Help us to forgive Those
Who Screw Us Over,
that we don't end up walking around poisoned.
Teach us, Jesus,
Show them to us, let us know who they are so
we can turn the other way.
Help us to stop enabling, and excusing the ignorance in this home,
on this planet;
keep us from feeling personally responsible, God,
for those who misuse and abuse;
they have choices, too.
Let me simply be a light in their lives.
Lord God,
that's all I ask.



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Beating Heart

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There are some great tattoos of Sacred Hearts out there on the web!

Here's one I photo-shopped. I thought it was so gorgeous with all the blue action going through it. Then I realized, this is the "Beating Heart", because initially our blood is blue, as it's going through the vein system of our bodies.

Non-traditional, or alternative healers will often look at the vein system in people who are in pain, to see where the blood is getting blocked. This is how they can get to the negative chi inside someone. This heart is a a healthy one.

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I recently had a healing session with a woman who practices a form of Tui Na. To my dismay, we discovered my tonsil was paralyzed, pulling on the muscles above my heart, not allowing blood to get through! All this time (for over 4 years) I thought there was something "wrong" with my heart... When all my heart was trying to do was just "trying"...
(It just goes to show what a soldier your heart can be.)

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God, help us not to be destructive about how we handle our hearts, or the hearts of others...
It's karma,
and it always comes back on us.


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Baby's Heart

The Baby Heart is the sweetest of all hearts...
We see a little bit of ourselves
in the hearts of all babies,
for they are open and innocent and new to life.

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God, thank You for the little babies in our lives...
Help us to give them good homes,
safe places to live and be nurtured.
Help us to have a better understanding
of nutrition and psychological care
for our little newborns.
Show us how
to get to the right resources we need
to empower our little children.
Help us to be more aware
of the need to surround all babies,
new and grown, at whatever ages,
with comfort, love, safety and healing.
Help us to remember
these are the basic needs of all human beings.
Give us understanding of one another
by helping us to see
these qualities in each other.

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I go through my day surrounded by many young adults... I sometimes have to remind myself they are old enough to be my own children. Their worlds have become even more complicated than mine, when I was their age. Sure, they have all the wonderful things modern-day technology brings! But I can see how together, we all get burned by information overload.

Sometimes they don't need to hear what I have to say. Sometimes, all that is needed is a hug, or a pat on the back; a little relief and assurance that things are okay.

We all live in the city... It can be an existence of great paranoia at times, dealing with strangers and random encounters on the streets and buses. Our living spaces have become so tight! If we want some expression or outlet for frustrations, we have to find places to go - and often pay money to do it. I don't envy the young adults of the new millennium.

Young children are brought up in this country to believe we live in a world of entitlement, and that's a lie. We have been given privileges and freedom, and we are required to uphold these gifts in order to enjoy them.

Just because you look cute, and can play games and/or perform well, does not mean you or anyone else is entitled to anything.

If anything, we are living in a time when Americans are being forced to learn about sharing.

We have to work hard to keep our hearts open and free of judgment and the bad attitudes that keep us from connecting with the hearts of others.

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God, thank You for the miracle this week, of bringing Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, to guide Flight 1549 safely to the surface of the Hudson River!! Thank You for giving him the desire he had from the time he was a little boy, to fly, and the knowledge and experience he was given to become an expert.

Thank You helping all 154 passengers to survive it, standing together on the wings of the plane!
And for allowing the city of New York
show what brave and resilient souls they are to help.
God Bless You All!



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For those babies and children,
the little angels that did not make it through the night, God, I pray that they are in Your Light,
and that their passage to You
was quick, and fast.



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