“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”  - Paulo Coelho

 So let's love. Let's hope. Let's uplift ourselves and reach for the best within us and around us. Let’s envision better ways ahead and strive toward them.

We face challenges, but are things as bad as the doomsday, constant fault-finders are proclaiming?

And how do we best respond to the divisiveness and hostility we see? To mean-spirited rhetoric, disrespect, and violence?

My heart is encouraging me to take the high road and stay on it. If I am going to walk my talk, I've got to make room in my heart for extra loving prayers for everyone who seems misguided. For all who have lost healthy perspectives, a value for harmony, a willingness to find common ground, and a caring for the good of all. For all who are angry, afraid, and hurting.

More than ever, I’m feeling urged to write about the power and potential within each of us to make a difference in these uncertain times. Even to preach about it. We really can promote healing, harmony, and well-being among us by being loving and kind, by holding hope, by being real, by listening to understand, and by spreading joy.

Yes, it sometimes looks as if the challenges we face are too big and complicated for us to play a part in resolving and correcting them. But I believe the seemingly small "high road" choices we make every day can positively influence every aspect in our personal lives, our communities, and the world.

When we notice the negatives, when we see forces that seem to want to make us afraid and weaken us, instead of dwelling on them, let's shift our attention and intentions to bringing “good things to life."

We really can do that. So let’s notice the goodness and beauty inside and outside of us. Let’s be life-affirming nurturers who are generous with smiles, praise, and gratitude.

And let’s keep all those who seem to be low on love and hope in our prayers and best wishes for health, well-being, and the happiness that comes from loving.

Always,
Charlene 

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”  - Paulo Coelho

#Love #Hope #TheTwelveGifts #TodaysTouchstone #Lifeaffirming #CharleneCostanzo #inspirationalquotes #healing #making a difference

from Touchstones: Stories for Living The Twelve Gifts -Reprinted with permission

Penny phoned from Oklahoma to share her story. For 20 years, while raising her children and managing her husband’s office, she felt there was something more she was supposed to do with her life. Like many adult men and women, she joked, “I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”  

One day Penny overheard someone ask her teenage daughter, “What does your mom do?”

“She runs,” her daughter answered.

“She’s a professional runner?” the acquaintance asked.

“Oh, no,” her daughter laughed. “She runs stuff. She runs my dad’s business. She runs our home. She runs me around. She runs everything.”

That was a wake-up call for Penny, nudging her to find her something more. 

Penny spent months researching, reflecting, and praying for guidance. Her search for direction included going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There, she had an epiphany. For years, whenever Penny heard complaints about the weather, the economy, and the limited opportunities in her hometown of Muskogee, Oklahoma, she wished someone would help people appreciate the richness of their heartland community. In Jerusalem, Penny heard an inner voice say, Why not you, Penny? Everywhere is holy land. Penny decided to go home and do what she had wanted someone to do.

Even though she had no training or experience in television, Penny felt led to produce and host a morning show that would feature the talent, beauty, and strength–the gifts–of local residents. After writing a business plan, she met with a banker who gave her a litany of reasons why her inspirational, Oprah-like show would fail. He then stood to signal the end of the meeting and said, “I hope I have deterred you, Penny, because you won’t last a week.”

Choking back tears, Penny responded, “On the contrary. You have convinced me:  I absolutely need to do this!” 

So, Penny went ahead, funding the show herself, while she built advertising support to cover the expenses, which she kept to a minimum. She encountered many obstacles along the way and conceded that the banker was right… about some things. She was naïve; she made mistakes. But, she also learned.  

“Most importantly, I learned how to tap into courage in order to be myself,” she said.  

According to Penny, her first taped shows were awful. “I was stiff and fake, trying to be like Oprah.” But, when Penny did her first live show, she spoke from her heart and discovered the power of being herself.

One day, a jazz band was among her guests. Ten minutes before the show, in a moment alone, Penny heard a song forming in her mind–I’ve got the positive bluuuuues…  I see the glass half fullll–and she laughed. A moment later, an inner voice said, Sing it on air, Penny. She had not sung out loud in front of others since she was a child. In fact, Penny confessed that whenever she sang in church, she did it softly, so she wouldn’t be heard by those around her. 

Disregarding her past resistance to singing in public, Penny told the band about the song and asked if they would give her back up.

“We’re with you, Penny. Go for it!” they urged.

The show started. Penny planned to introduce the song after the break. But during that break, she felt a twinge of fear.  So did her husband. In fact, he was so afraid she would embarrass herself, that he left the studio.  His reaction led her to question herself.  

I have a terrible singing voice.  What am I thinking?

“In the past I would not have taken the risk,” Penny said. “And I almost didn’t. But suddenly I knew: I have to ignore the fear!”

In spite of her apprehensions, Penny did sing on air that day. She pushed through the fear. And when she did, she took another huge step on her hero’s journey in reclaiming her voice… this time quite literally. 

As we ended that telephone conversation, Penny summed up her perspective on courage in a way that touched upon nearly all The Twelve Gifts.  

“Each of us is a magnificent creation,” she said. “But we’re all so afraid to let people see who we really are. How often do we discourage one another, instead of celebrating our efforts? How often do we turn away from watching an awkward child dance? How often do we avoid eye contact when a person speaks nervously? Who said we have to have pretty voices to sing? In heaven, all our voices sound beautiful!”    

Penny’s TV show aired for three years. Although the program never earned money for Penny, it provided enormous profit to her and to the community, as the richness of Muskogee was celebrated, just as Penny had wished someone would do.  #     

After three years of keeping cancer at bay, the growth of leukemia cells in my mom’s body began to increase rapidly. When an infection took hold too, my mom was admitted to the hospital. I flew from Arizona to New Jersey to be with her.

Whenever I recall a particular walk with her, I see her wearing her favorite pink sweater. I can almost feel her hand and arm resting on my arm for support. With her right hand she pushed her IV pole. Slowly, with small steps, we made our way around the corridor, pausing at each room. When a patient made eye contact, my mom smiled and said, “Hello.” At the doorway of each sleeping patient, she let go of the IV pole and offered a little sign-of-the-cross blessing with her hand.

At the nurses’ station, Mom stopped and thanked everyone for their care. Upon returning to her room, I helped my mom back into bed. As her head touched the pillow, she was asleep.

Sinking into the comfortable lounger next to Mom’s bed, I noticed the soft rays of September sunlight cascading across her body. Through the opened window, I heard the laughter of children and the drone of a distant lawn mower. I breathed in the fragrance of fresh cut grass. Somehow, despite my mother nearing death, everything seemed right and beautiful in the world.

Instead of opening the book in my lap and reading to pass the time, I simply sat in what felt like a sacred moment.

Suddenly, in that state of peace, I heard in my body: What you do with your time and talent is critically important. Pay attention. And I knew that meant that Someday had arrived for me and that those guiding words are true for you, for everyone.

Might your Someday be now?

More to come.

With love,
Charlene

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

— DALAI LAMA

Funny, like a previous blog quote about a mosquito pleased that everyone was clapping for him when he took his first flight out into the world. And you know this scenario is true, too, if you’ve ever tried sleeping with a mosquito in your room. But do you buy into the take-away the Dalai Lama intended for us? 

If you and I think in terms of numbers, we as individuals are very small parts of the 7 billion people on the planet. But that doesn’t mean we don’t play a significant part.  

“I am only one, but I am one,” said 19th-century author and Unitarian minister, Edward Everett Hale. “I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do."            

 Have you heard the story about the child walking along a shoreline that is covered with beached starfish? If you’re not familiar with it, here’s how it goes: 

A young girl bends down, picks up a starfish and flings it out to sea. She tosses another, another and another. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of starfish lying helpless on the sand, above the tide line. A man walking along that same beach tells the young girl, “You’ll never be able to save them all, so why make the effort? What difference does it make?

Tossing yet another starfish out to sea, she answers, "It makes a difference for that one." 

In 2021, let's not think we are too small, too old, too young, or too insignificant in any way - or not enough in any way. Let’s just make a difference.

With courage,
Charlene