Merry Christmas to all.

This holiday has been an enjoyable one. It seems the older I get, the more I learn to love and appreciate spending time with my family. Though the visit has been brief, it has been very good. It had been a good four or five months since I had seen most of my family, others it has been almost a year. The two days spent here in NY were spent well, we took in a good movie (see "The Family Stone" if you have the chance), attended a Christmas Eve service at the church I grew up in (where I got to see some people I have not seen in a very long time), and spent the entire day today with all of my exstended family. Good times and good memories that I will be sure not to forget for a long time.

Life really is all about choices.

Disclaimer : Please know that I am not looking back with anger or with judgment myself, or even the slightest disdain for where I came from, I am just sharing my thoughts on my life these days.

Whether I was aware of it or not I grew up in a world built on and around judgment. It was a world that had lists of things that you did not do and a list of acceptable behaviors. This life was all I knew, the judgment was so deeply ingrained, I would have never really labeled it as such, it was more like the norm. Completely unaware of it, I learned to fear in this life. Fear the thoughts of others, fear disappointing others, and to fear having a differing opinion. I was completely unaware of how that fear controlled my life. Until today.

But now my world is no longer built on judgment. No longer built around a religion of do's and don'ts. The life I live, the people I surround myself with, are not people of judgment. Yet I still am captive to the fear that dictated my life for fourteen years.

I may have had many thoughts and made many statements about the people I surround myself with and the life I live over the last fifteen months, but judgment has never been a part of any of them.

So this is my chance. My chance to develop an opinion (actually I already have some, it is just time to start sharing them), to start thinking out loud (every once and awhile), to talk about things that interest me (throw in some Buddhism and thanking God for latte's) and be myself.

Now of course this is easier said than done, but this is something. Being aware of this, this fear of judgment and that there is no longer a need to live with that, well to me that is huge.

So for the record :

-I read an amazing book called "Being Peace" by Thich Nhat Hanh. And I will soon be reading it again. And yes, it is a book written by a Buddhist, about some Buddhist thoughts and practices. And I am more than positive that it is going to help me follow Jesus better.

-I recently learned (or was made aware) that I am an introvert. Which I am sure a lot of people already knew. This has been a good revelation and has shed some much needed light on how I process my thoughts and my life. But being an introvert does not give me an excuse to isolate myself or shut myself off from the world, from my community. I hope to learn as much as I can from this new revelation, while keeping in mind that it is not supposed to be something that dictates every single one of my thoughts and actions. Does that make sense to anyone else?

-This morning Advent came to mean the most it has ever meant to me. Correlating a few scriptures (as I have been trying my best to follow the lectionary), something clicked for me. The birth of Jesus, the manger, the nativity took on kingdom significance in my mind. The lectionary this week has been about Elijah and John the Baptist. John the Baptist prepared the way, he began to announce the kingdom come. And that kingdom was coming in Bethlehem. It was coming in the birth of baby Jesus in a manger. There is much more to think about and I am excited to be doing this kind of thinking.

And that's about all I got for you for now. I hope I was not vague, call me out if you think I was. If you want to know more, simply ask.

Here's to life without fear of judgment.

Practice breathing and smiling.

Take ten breaths, count them as you breathe in and breathe out.

Stop and Be.

Walk and Be.

Simply Be.

Be Conscious.

Be Awake.

Be Peace.

I need to repent of the fear of man.