“fixing up” a good weekend

For years, I would dread conversations with my father. I found his incessant talking about horse racing, and Saratoga Springs in general, very tedious and shallow, and it seemed like this was all he ever talked about. At that point in our lives, we met maybe, once a year for dinner, and I think we both left those dinners feeling drained and disappointed in our relationship.

Several years ago, I started to seriously work on myself, in regard to my relationship with him, and began to change my negative, disapproving attitude about his life. The first few times that we met, and he started talking about the track, I could feel myself tighten inside as I started to get mentally critical, but I caught this, and turned it around by asking him questions about the races. I must say that I didn’t then, nor do I now, care at all about the subject of horse racing, but when I hated the subject of racing, dreaded even his mention of it, it didn’t go away, it grew and became the negative focal point of every interaction that we had.

Something changed when I started to look for things to like about him, instead of things to feel disapproval about. He still comes to Saratoga every summer for the racing season, and we meet almost every week for breakfast. He rarely talks about racing anymore …or does he? I truly am not sure. It doesn’t matter. I love meeting with him because I love him. That is all I need to know.

What plans do you have for this weekend? Are you looking forward to them or dreading them? Maybe start right now sending out “good vibes” to the people, places and environments that you will be interacting with…start expecting and looking for the best.

“When you say to yourself, ‘I am going to have a pleasant visit or a pleasant journey’, you are literally sending elements and forces ahead of your body that will arrange things to make your visit or journey pleasant….Our thoughts, or in other words, our state of mind, is ever at work ‘fixing up’ things good or bad for us in advance.” Prentice Mulford, from “Thoughts are Things (written in 1889)

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Calm expectation

every morning, Noah jumps onto my lap as I start to write

I was listening to a radio broadcast of, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the other day. At the conclusion of the program, they said that when C. S. Lewis was a teenager, he suddenly had a vision of a faun walking in the woods carrying a package. Many years later, he wanted  to write a book with this character in it, but had nothing except the picture in his mind of the faun walking in the woods. In a flash, a lion came bounding onto the scene, and the Chronicles of Narnia were born.

I loved this story for many reasons. It says to me that the life I desire is a work in progress, and even though I can’t see the entire picture from where I stand at this moment, it is coming together in a perfect way.  It’s comforting to me to remember that divine ideas have their own timing. When I can wait, in calm expectation; ready to act, but not forcing it, an idea, a suggestion from a friend, an opportunity, a new way of thinking about a perplexing problem, will come bounding into my life and bring with it the answers that I have been seeking.

“He who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side“. The Talmud

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