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CREDO

Spiritual Growth: Thoughts On God

Many years ago I attended a CREDO Team Building Retreat in Naples, Italy.  At some point during the retreat, the chaplain who was leading us read the following quotation:

“The meaning of life is listening to Pavarotti, feeling the sun on your face, drinking a bottle of wine, and then another.  The meaning of life is having a safe and healthy society, a happy family life, good health, a loving wife (husband), work that you like, smelling the smell of a new car and the ocean air, being able to hit a bull’s eye, coming home with the fish and not another fish story.”

                                                       Carmine Pucci
                                                          (Butcher)

 

That’s right, he was an Italian butcher and these words of his struck a chord deep in my heart.  They resonated clearly within my soul.  It’s the kind of down-to-earth philosophy/spirituality that brings me home – to myself and to my God.

As I read these words again today I am transported to my beloved Italy where everything is experienced in the moment.  The senses are so alive in the Italian culture and emotions are right there, on the surface of the skin.  Italians most definitely have a passion about everything they do.  Even the most mundane thing is appreciated to the core.

So as I allow a wave of Italian nostalgia to sweep over me, and as I reread Carmine’s words, here are some God thoughts that come swimming to the surface.

  • See the golden sunrise and the blood red sunset spreading their beauty over creation, and you see God.
  • Smell the intoxicating perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle, or the aroma of freshly baked bread, and you smell God.
  • Touch a baby’s cheek with the tip of your nose, or kiss the soft folds of skin on the back of his neck, and you touch God.
  • Taste the exquisite flavor of a piece of chocolate, or a forkful of fresh home-made Italian pasta or exotic Indian curry, and you taste God.
  • Hear the song of the blackbird in the evening dusk, or the crescendo of a full concert orchestra, or the whisper of a soft summer wave on the shore, and you hear God.

Amen!!

It’s amazing all the people, places, and situations where I find God.  Where I can meet him head on in my day.  Right now as I sit in my Florida lanai, I can hear the wind sighing strongly through the pine woods behind my home, and I hear God. The wind is picking up as we experience the outer reaches of tropical storm Ida, and the various wind chimes around my garden are tinkling and I think of heaven, and cherubs, and God.  

My cat, Mokka, lies peacefully sleeping on a chair beside me curled into a perfect circle, her body rising and falling gently with each breath she takes.  She is a perfect example of God’s creative powers.  And the tantalizing aroma of fresh made curried lentil and vegetable soup is wafting through the sliding doors and I am reminded of ……………… my humanity and the fact that I’m hungry and it’s time for dinner!!

Life Coach: A Way Of Life

I can no longer ignore the fact that some of you may be wondering why the words Life Coach precede the words Spirit, Body and Mind at the top of my blog page.  Life Coaching is a new career field that has opened up in recent years and I am, in fact, a certified Life Coach.  I chose to get my certification with the Certified Coaches Federation (CCF). 

However, Life Coaching is something that I have been doing for years.  I just didn’t call it that or realize that I was doing that until late last year.  That’s when I “God-incidentally” received an email through an unknown source that introduced me to CCF.  I contacted them to make inquiries about the certification course they offered and that was when I recognized that most of what they taught I already knew and practiced. I just didn’t have certification in the specific field.

I have already mentioned in previous blogs that I made a serious life change about thirty years ago.  This entailed much work on myself, changes in attitudes and behavior, in other words a major lifestyle change.  As a result of all of the above, I opened my heart, my mind, and my soul to many opportunities that I would otherwise have never seen.  I opened many doors that I had previously ignored and began to live a very full and rich life and continue to do so to this present moment.

I explored many paths on the road back to the religion of my childhood – Catholicism.  However, the practice of my religion is only one aspect of my spirituality.  Along the way I opened myself to being there for others, becoming part of the CREDO retreat team in Naples, Italy and also becoming a facilitator for a class called NADSAP. This acronym stood for Navy Alcohol Drug Safety Action Program, which was later known as Navy Alcohol Drug and Substance Abuse Program.  I believe that today this program carries yet another acronym and name which I do not know.

In order to undertake these roles I had to go through both programs as a willing participant then undertake paraprofessional training. They were both fairly stringent and involved a lot of personal growth and continued maintenance training each year.  I will not go into the details of those trainings but I can tell you the skills that we came out with were highly developed in the following areas:  active listening, empathy, compassion, tracking, objective feedback, personal disclosure, non judgmentalism, personality recognition, and genuineness.

So let’s get back to Life Coaching.  What is it?  And why do people need a Life Coach.  If you think about a sports team, whether they are good or bad, they got to where they are with the help of a coach, maybe many coaches.  The coach is there to assess the teams strengths and weaknesses, to see where they stand right now, and to look at what they can do to achieve future goals. He or she is there to make sure they don’t get stuck. 

And so it is with an individual person who is attempting to navigate the oceans of life.  Why can’t the team or the individual see that and work to change things without the help of a coach you may ask?  The best answer to that question may be because they are all too emotionally close to the the issue/s at hand.  In other words they can’t see the forest for the trees, or vice versa. 

This is where the coach comes in.  However, there is one big difference between a sports team coach and a Life Coach.  A sports team coach, once he/she has made all the necessary assessments, then makes a plan and gives instructions as to what the team has to do.  A Life Coach creates a professional rapport with the client from which he or she can then help the client recognize where they are at and what goals they want to achieve. Then through the skilful use of uniquely created tools, the Life Coach will encourage the client to take action to achieve their goals.

Life Coaching is most definitely a process which involves a commitment from both parties – the coach and the client.  And when I say a commitment I mean a signed-on-the-dotted-line-contract kind of commitment.  This creates a professional relationship between the two parties. The coach commits to be there fully and intentionally for the client, and the client commits to stick with the coach for a specified amount of time in order to reach his or her goals.

The main idea behind Life Coaching is to help people to recognize and break through their self-imposed limitations and to identify and achieve goals, dreams, and aspirations that will improve and enhance their lives, their careers, and their relationships.  The coach never tells the client what to do.  The coach is there to actively and objectively listen, to empower, and then to encourage the client along his or her path.

The beauty of Life Coaching is that it does not “brain wash” or take away from the client’s unique ideas, nor does it seek to interfere with or change their personality.  The coach becomes a “companion walker in life” if you will, however the client has to take his or her own footsteps. 

Another unique aspect of Life Coaching is that you do not have to be face-to-face with the client to do effective coaching.  In fact much Life Coaching is done over the telephone.  My personal preference is to have at least one initial face-to-face session with the client and then move to telephone sessions if that proves to be a convenient method for the client to be coached.

Life Coaching is a very satisfying career.  It is a privilege indeed when someone asks me to enter their life.  My sense of wonder increases a thousand fold as I watch a client’s sense of wonder at themselves increase through the coaching process.  I find that it is an honor to help someone to recognize their personal beauty, worth, and potential as they explore their relationships, their place on this earth, and the value that they can bring to anything they put their mind to.          

Spiritual Growth: God’s Love for Us

 

I have mentioned Max Lucado several times in other postings.  I continue to say that he is my favourite spiritual author and is a daily companion for me through his writings.  This morning I was carrying my meditation books out to the screened room where I spend my morning quiet time.  Max Lucado’s book Grace For The Moment fell to the floor and opened at the page for November 30 which carried this topic: “Ponder the Love of God”. 

It seemed like a good thing to ponder in my quiet time.  To help you set the scene in your head and your heart I’ll give you the rest of the page.  The Bible verse was Ephesians 3:18 – “I pray that you …. will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love – how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.”  Lucado’s comments that followed were: “There is no way our little minds can comprehend the love of God.  But that didn’t keep Him from coming……  From the cradle in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem we’ve pondered the love of our Father.  What can you say to that kind of emotion?  Upon learning that God would rather die than live without you, how do you react?  How can you begin to explain such passion?”

Ephesians reminded me of a CREDO Team Retreat that I attended several years ago in a 14th century monastery on the side of a hill just south of Rome, Italy.  The monastery was named after Saint Sosio.  Set in rich green woodland it was soaked in spirituality.  During one of the sessions the Chaplain who was leading the retreat posed this question to us: “What word comes to mind when you think of God?”  A litany of adjectives such as “awesome”, “wondrous”, “mighty”, “compassionate”, “majestic” were pronounced.  But the only word that would come to my mind was “huge”.  In my nightly gratitude journal I faithfully open each entry with “My HUGE God”.

I then remembered a Club Beyond youth retreat that I helped to chaperone in another location in Italy.  It was not quite as “spiritually soaked” as San Sosio but it was very beautiful and certainly spiritual enough for the odd band of teens that we accompanied there!  A guest speaker had been arranged for Saturday evening (I do not remember his name), but his words have remained indelibly printed on my heart.  I believe he was referring to something that the author Brennan Manning wrote when he challenged all the teens to take into their hearts the fact that “God was madly, passionately in love with them”. 

Isn’t that what Lucado is talking about too?  I have several of the pages in Grace For The Moment with the corners turned down.  Most of them refer to God’s love for us.  In his comments on March 10 he writes:  “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.  If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it.  He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning…….. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart…. Face it, friend.  He’s crazy about you.”  This is just what that Saturday night speaker was talking about too.

And on February 18 under the theme “God Cares About You”, here is what Lucado writes.  “Consider the earth!  As you stand .. observing God’s workshop, let me pose a few questions.  If He is able to place the stars In their sockets and suspend the sky like a curtain, do you think it is remotely possible that God is able to guide your life?  If your God is mighty enough to ignite the sun, could it be that He is mighty enough to light your path?  If He cares enough about the planet Saturn to give it rings or Venus to make it sparkle, is there an outside chance that He cares enough about you to meet your needs?”

When I look at my life and see the miracles that God has wrought there once I became willing to allow Him into my life, I am sometimes totally overcome.  When I think of the dark hole that I used to exist in (I cannot say “live in”), and I know the light and the joy that fill my life today, I know that God loves me passionately.  I know that He is crazy about me and that He truly cares about me.  

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