Home

This is a picture of my house – or rather, my yard – of which I will only show a small piece because I am stubbornly private. It’s a good house and, like all good houses, has held its share of pain as well as joy. Call it “seasoning.”

I like to say I’ll be here forever, which of course is just one of those silly things we tell ourselves when we love something and can’t imagine letting it go. Who am I to speak of forever? My existence is only a small blip on the radar screen of forever, here and gone in an instant.

My house, though, I love unapologetically: its wide windows that show me the rain, stars, and moonlight; the squeaky hinge on the bathroom door that I could lubricate but somehow never do; the crooked corner in the living room that inspires speculation about drunken drywall contractors.

I love the way light winds its way into each room at a slightly different angle, the way the hall closet still smells of someone else’s candles, the too-sunny greenhouse window that cooks even the hardiest of plants to a pulp in the dense heat of summer.

Best of all, I love the garden, home to hundreds of Pacific tree frogs and numerous speckled, smooth, and mossy boulders – all of which I adore with shameless fanaticism. I love the neighborhood with its foothills for walking, its backdrop of dusky mountains, the way the wild pushes its brambled back up against my fence.

And I even try to love the neighbors – honest, I do try.

I fill my home with the things I love, the cobalt blue KitchenAid mixer that was a wedding present from my grandma, my mother’s bust of Mozart, the old rocking chair my parents carried me to for comfort in the wee hours, the pets I dare to love even though I know they will one day break my heart, and my special people, who share with me daily their truth, wisdom, and grace.

This house is and will be witness to the mundane, the profound, the astonishing.  It is witness to our lives.

Taking Risks

I’ve never been much of a risk taker.  I don’t buy lottery tickets, for example; I’d rather keep my dollar, thank you very much.  Even roller skating on the fourth grade class field trip to Star Skate was a stretch for me.  Wheels on my feet sounded scary.  I generally like my feet just fine on the ground.

But when it comes to my writing, I live dangerously.  Each time I write, it’s as if I’m leaping off the edge of something.  Writing, as I’ve said before, is an act of faith.  One of my favorite quotes is by John Burroughs: “Leap, and the net will appear.”  For me, this describes the writing process perfectly.

There’s an even bigger risk, though, that scrawling my most intimate thoughts across a cold blank page, even than sending them into cyberspace.  That risk would be to write “safe.”

I could compose nice little articles about nice little people.  Other nice people would read them and say that they were “nice.”  I could then smile and think, “Yes, I’ve always been good at telling people what they want to hear.”

Now there’s a truly frightening idea: to take my unique writing voice and use it to say something mundane, something forgettable.  Something I think people want to hear.  Something that doesn’t feel real to me.

This page, or this “slot in cyberspace,” or whatever it is, it is my space.  My writing time is my time.  It feels important to use this space, and this time, to say something true.

So the real irony is that when I take risks with my writing, I am actually playing it safe.  Honest writing still feels like a risk, but in fact I know the net is always there.

I just have to leap before I can see it.

Tapping Into Abundance

The universe has no limits, but we humans like boxes.  We think we need them.  We are uncomfortable with limitlessness.  In our minds, everything is finite.  When someone tells us we can have as much money as we need or want, just for the asking, that we can create our own reality by visualizing, we reject that idea.  “It can’t be that easy,” we tell ourselves.  “If it were, everyone would be rich and successful.”

I saw the movie and read the book The Secret.  A lot of what was said there resonated with me, although it has been said before.  Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization, published decades earlier, suggests that many of the same concepts are true and offers many of the same techniques as The Secret, with more depth and specificity.

I believe that much, if not all, of what is suggested in those books is possible.  At first, though, I didn’t want to believe it.  Why did I reject the idea that the universe will support total abundance in my life?

I don’t think I rejected the idea for the same reason many people do.  Many people (the proverbial masses) engage in what I call “paucity thinking.”  They believe there is not enough to go around, that we have to “get ours before someone else does.”  This is not very useful thinking.

What if there were truly plenty of everything, enough to go around and more?  Many indicators suggest there is plenty.  True abundance can be found at every turn.

Since I don’t buy into this “paucity thinking” model, why did I initially shy away from The Secret’s suggestion that anything I want can manifest?  To me, it seems the book does not address a key component: the synchronicity needed to manifest our desires.  I believe that what we want must be in accordance with our true purpose as an individual (or one of our true purposes, since each of us may well have many).

Each of us has innate gifts, and I suggest we are morally and spiritually obligated to put them to their “highest and best use,” to borrow a real estate term.  We don’t have to; we could sit on the couch and drink beer all our lives, but in exchange the universe probably wouldn’t give us much more than an unhappy, purposeless life.  We could visualize all our desires to our heart’s content through the haze of a drunken stupor: driving a Lamborghini; owning a mansion in the Hollywood hills.  But it probably wouldn’t happen because there we sit, swilling down beer and watching reruns of Two and a Half Men.  We wouldn’t be using our “God-given” talents for the greater good.

That is the ingredient left out of The Secret.  It’s our job to discover our special purpose (no, not like Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk) and do it.  That’s how we tap into the abundance.  That’s the doorway to the limitlessness of existence.

I’m working on it.  I’m not drinking beer on the couch.  I’m using my gifts so that I can lead a purpose-driven, fulfilling life.  And though I don’t care much for Lamborghinis, I can think of a few things I’d like to own and accomplish.  When that “little voice inside me” says no, you can’t, I order it to stand corrected.  Yes, I can, I counter.  And why not?

For more thoughts and writings by Jennifer, visit her website at jenniferphelpswrites.com