As we enter into the holiday season, I encourage you to mindfully consider how you will choose to experience these next 50 days until January 1, 2019. How can we move through these holidays and develop a peacefulness in our minds? I think all of us yearn for peace in the midst of difficult times in life. I believe there is a path to peace.
Seeking peace
During the holidays, many of us fall into deeper bouts of depression and anxiety as we feel more deeply the losses in our lives, or the negative narratives we see in the news. Sometimes, the weather or the shorter days gets us down. Here in California, we are entering the holiday season with the largest wildfire in history raging around us. As I write this blog, I’m looking outside to a dystopian sky where the light of the sun is desperately seeking to break through the smoke filled atmosphere. I walked my dog this morning wearing a mask because I read last night that the air in northern California is less safe to breathe than the air in Beijing. Unsettling, to say the least.
My own path to peace
During times of panic, worry, and anxiety in my own life, there are words I turn to for solace. I find peace in a letter found in the Bible written to a community of Jesus followers in Philippi (located in modern day Greece), by a pastor named Paul. Many of Paul’s letters address the anxiety that came as a result of divisions that were forming in the early communities that were following the teachings of Jesus—teachings about love, peace and unity. The disunity was evident in the early followers of Jesus and, unfortunately, this same disunity continues to burn today, like the fires raging throughout California. Disunity amongst community can also mirror the anxiety in our own soul.
Mindfulness Practice
The words I turn to I have copied below to share with you. I encourage you to find a quiet place right now where you can read through this scripture. As you read it slowly, let it teach you a path to peace.
Pray About Everything
6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies. -Excerpt from Philippians chapter 4, the Message Translation by Eugene Peterson.
Gratitude: a gift to you
I hope these words have spoken deeply to you. I would like to focus on a key phrase in this letter that I believe to be a clear pathway that God encourages us to follow in order to experience peace in our souls. Gratitude. Thankfulness. That’s it. Cultivate gratitude for what is happening in your life, positive and negative. I’m not saying it is easy. In fact, I think it is probably one of the most difficult things to do in our lives. I’m often drawn to what is wrong and miss out on the opportunity to see positive all around me.
Today, I am focusing my gratitude on the sense of community that is forged from the fires here in California, as people pull together to help one another through the disaster and ensuing tragedy. We are still feeling that strong sense of community from last year’s fires that were near us, and hope that it will be same for the communities currently experiencing so much loss and grief.
Journal
I love that we can turn our worries into prayers. The act of praying is something we all share no matter what our faith may be. Connecting to a power higher than ourselves is the road that leads to peace. I named my counseling practice “New Roads” because I believe we are all on a road or path in life that can either lead to peace or destruction. It is easy to lose our sense of peace on our own road of life, but thankful prayer is the tool we all have access to that will lead us towards peace. For some of us prayer comes very easily, but for others it feels like a religious activity that is inaccessible to us. If you are in the latter, I encourage you to push past any preconceived ideas you have about prayer or religion and simply start talking and writing to God. Make your requests (your petitions) be known to God and God will give you a peace that surpasses all understanding.
A Simple mindfulness tool
Gratitude. Write down three things you are grateful for right now and every day for the next 50 days and your outlook on life most likely will be much more positive and lifegiving, as you being to see there can still be hopeful things in the midst of difficulties. It can be the same three things each day, the point of the exercise is to think about, to focus on the good things around you. Take the challenge and see what happens. What better way to start out the new year than by having a more positive outlook on life as you start out on your own road in a new direction?