"Who Can Turn The World On With Her Smile?"

As I sat out on my front porch tonight, covered in 6 layers of clothing to be able to sit out of doors for prolonged periods of time on a semi-cold Canadian Winter Evening; I watched the Total Lunar Eclipse. A rare event, and also one which makes me reflective. I sat out there in the cold, neighbours on their evening walks passing back and forth, Coyotes yelping, and howling in the far distance, and my brother's cat trying desperately to get outside every time my Mum opens the door to see how the eclipse is progressing. Something magical happens as the earth sits exactly between the sun and the moon. All of the animals feel it, and consequently, they start to act a little funny. Maybe it has to do with magnetism, or maybe they just don't like the idea of the moon going dark, I don't know. As I sat out there, I couldn't help but start an open conversation with God, and discuss my life and how it's progressing with him. The last couple of years (as I've mentioned before), I've been going through a huge exodus, and recently, through my learning period, I've learned some things which I really wouldn't be able to progress further without. For this I am grateful, even though the learning process was painful. I really feel like I narrowly escaped something dreadful in the process. But of course, this is how we do learn. At this point, I feel almost like a different person. Today on my walk, I was walking down the street, feeling like Mary Tyler Moore - exuding confidence and thinking "I'm going to make it after all", and really feeling comfortable in my skin for the first time - ever really. After a while, I started to get stares from creepy men, so I thought "Maybe I ought not to exude so much confidence" Sad how we do that to ourselves, a little bit of fear makes us shrink back and think - maybe I should be less than I am. The quotation I have on my blogspot here to the right by Marianne Williamson states that we ought not to listen to those voices but become who we rightfully and truly are. Forget what the world thinks, forget what you have been trained to think of yourself, and see yourself the way that God sees you. If we could all do that, we would be amazed at our potential. I know that we all have divinity inside of us as we are his children whether or not we know it. I hope and I pray that each one of us can see ourselves for who we are and who we can become. If we do that then nothing can stop us. We hear so much negativity in a day; most of it comes from inside our minds - negative self talk. It's something we've been trained to do, but something that we need to overcome if we really want to change ourselves and the world around us. It seems silly, but Stuart Smalley had the right idea - lol - "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonnit, people like me" If you don't get that reference, watch some old episodes of SNL. So, that sums up my thoughts as I watched the lunar eclipse tonight.