STAY CALM/BE THE CALM

Dear Angelic Blog Buddies:

Many of you know that I was inspired by the angels to create the website Psalm91Angels.com along with the super talented artist, Cheryl Kirsch. It is our hope that people will acquaint themselves with the blessings of Psalm 91 which is known as the Shield and Protection Psalm. At our website, we share some amazing stories about how the reciting of this beautiful psalm has wrapped people in God's protection.

I love the words of this Psalm: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God, in Him will I trust."

In short, God is my strength. I go to God when I need help in coping. And, quite frankly, I have been going to God a lot more lately because I am in need of God helping me stay calm; be calm. I am in need of God helping me cope with all the changes that are taking place.

The Bible also inspires us with the words, "Be still, and know that I AM God.

In the midst of these amazing, accelerated energies that have me bouncing off the walls at times, the Divine is lovingly reminding me that the way to cope is to be still and acquaint myself with God's many expressions of strength, one of which is calmness.

Haven't you found that it takes unbelievable strength to stay calm in the midst of chaos?

Don't you feel at times you just want to be crazy or get crazy like the energies that are around you? It seems to take less effort to go with the agitation energies; however haven't you found that afterwards you are thoroughly exhausted from having participated in getting angry or stirred up? And I always end up thinking: Why did I do that? I know better.

We are are here to embody calmness; to exude calmness. That's a higher calling we have answered. We are here to be the calmness of the eye of the storm. The hurricane windsof change are our traveling companions. With whirlwinds around us in every direction, we are here to stay calm; be calm. We are here to hold the center.

The dictionary describes calm as: free from agitation; still or nearly still. Not excited by emotion; peaceful.

It comes from the Middle French word: calme which means quiet and stillness. However, before that there was the Latin word: caumma which means heat of the day. It references that at the hottest part of the day the recommendation is to take a siesta; be calm; relax.

So when things get hot, chaotic, explosive - take a siesta with God.

I think it is interesting that within the word calm there are the letters "alm". The singular "alm" is really not a word. The word "alms" is both the singular and plural. Alms means a gift or gifts for the poor.

So I am taking a little liberty here by reflecting that when we choose calmness, to be calm, we choose to gift that part of ourselves that is poor in spirit. The poor in spirit part of us is that part that wants to run around with our pants on fire and get ourselves in a panic and everyone around us in a panic as well.

I am writing this blog on the morning of my 60th birthday. The gift I want to give to myself this year is to get to know God's calmness more intimately and become that calmness within myself.

There's a lot of anxieties that we are confronting on a daily basis; there are a lot of people that are quite simply pure agitation energies. I think some people wake up in the morning with the goal to agitate as many people as possible.

Many of you know my love for blown glass and that I am a huge fan of Dale Chihuly. In watching a PBS special on Chihuly (Fire and Ice), I recognized that glass blowers have the attitude, if at first you don't succeed, just break the glass and reuse the glass to create a new piece.

We have to break up or shatter the parts of ourselves that just are not shaping into the divine form we are striving for. So the breakup of old thinking and behavior allows for sacred space for remaking ourselves. You've got to break it to remake it.

One way to break up the old forms, is to take a break. When we find ourselves going down a path of insanity, craziness, agitation, anger, anxiety, the key is to interrupt yourself.

You've heard the teaching that if you feel you are going to explode, count to ten.
It's important that we take a break to create an actual break from the non-abundant energies we may find ourselves slipping into. Walk away from a confrontation. Take deep breaths. Take a pause. It's funny but one way to tell negative behavior choices to take a hike, is to stop and take a hike physically yourself.

We have the gift of free will. Choose to relax. When you feel yourself wound so tight that you feel like you are going to snap; do something that gives you the feeling of unwinding yourself. Take a walk. Physical activity relaxes the muscles that are tense. Walking helps clear the mind and calm the emotions. Someone shared with me this weekend that she walks daily through her neighborhood with her two dogs. She chants while she walks. How blessed is that neighborhood?!

There's so much yamma yamma coming at us from all directions that it's hard to listen to a very important voice: the voice of your own personal body.

Another of God's infinite strengths is wisdom. God has given us a body that speaks to us. As the lyrics of the song tell us, "It is in every one of us to be wise."

Some years ago, our carbon monoxide alarm went off in our house. It was the evening of my birthday. The alarm awoke Chuck and myself. We had a poof back from our furnace and carbon monoxide was released into the house.

The fire department was called and one of the fireman told us that there had been a slow furnace leak for sometime and it finally got to the alarm level. He was amazed that no one had experienced headaches in our home. Well, I had been having painful headaches in the middle of the night and had chosen to brush it off. My body was telling me loud and clear that something was not right; and I chose not to listen. It is only by God's grace that Chuck and I, and our dogs are still here on the planet.

Pay attention to your body. Listen to its voice of protection. Migraines, body stress, exhaustion are all signals from the Master Physician within that there is something to be alarmed about on the physical level. Just as with the carbon monoxide incident, my body was pulling the alarm with extreme headaches to get my attention.

The body will give us whisper warnings and then there are times it will pull the fire alarm. Medical research has shown a parallel between anger we do not deal with and the body's responding with a heart attack. It's just not healthy to keep things bottled up inside of ourselves. I truly believe that the Master Physician energy inside all of us talks to us continously. The Physician will attempt to get our attention through spiritual inspirations; then mental communication; then emotional and if we don't get the message the messages are communicated through the physical body. The messages are wake up calls that something is out of balance and needs attention.

I once read a statement that for every one thing that goes wrong, there are a hundred blessings. So when we have that one negative experience, it is a great time to be still, get a journal out and write 100 things that are great in our life. Sometimes teachers would have students write a statement 100 times to ingrain within the student's consciousness the desire improved behavior.

We have free will to either energize the calamity or chaos energies or strengthen ourselve with God's calmness. We can choose to stay in God's calmness until we feel our strength fortified and we are able to be the calmness in living our lives.

There's a lot of emotional stress on the planet. We are experiencing sadness, anxiety, fear. We are in the midst of great changes. Change means something is ending the way that it was before and is making room for something new. There are things that are happening that are out of our personal control, such as floods, tornadoes, etc.

With the endings we often experience the emotion of sadness. Sadness over loss of jobs when a business ends. Sadness over loss of home, property - even lives - when there are natural disasters. It's hard to stay calm when your whole world is changing before your eyes.

There's anxiety about the future. I am simply sharing this because we are all dealing on a day to day basis with intense energies.

It is important that we avoid needless pain. As I stated above, there are things that are out of our personal control and we need all our spiritual strength to stay calm dealing with these changes. We can support ourselves by recognizing situations where we create pain for ourselves. It can be in our thinking or in allowing our buttons to be pushed by others.

And sometimes we are just plain afraid of the unknown. We don't know what the future will bring. We put on a good face for the world; however, on the inside we are just downright scared.

In the Bible the statement "fear not" appears 365 times. That means there's a fear not in the Bible for each day of the year. In short, God has got us covered.

God has given each and every one of us the gift of the companionship of a guardian angel. As Psalm 91 shares: He shall give His angels charge over you; to keep you in all your ways.

I shared with people that I am a modern day Paul Revere telling people, "The angels are here. The angels are here." God has given us so many wonderful gifts of support and one of the greatest is the gift of the angelic kingdom. The angels are God's messengers of God's eternal love for us. When writing Commune with the Angels, I was given the message to share that the word Angel brings the blessing of

Accept
Now
God's
Eternal
Love

There's a lot of bizarre behaviors taking place on planet earth; a lot of bizarre circumstances. Circumstances do not create our happiness. It is our attitude, our outlook, our approach to life that matters. The word worry comes from the Dutch word "worgen" which means to strangle. We often strangle ourselves with our worrisome attitudes. In Commune with the Angels, I also shared the inspiration: Don't worry about tomorrow. God is already there.

My attitude for this new birthday year is to remember that when I feel at the end of my rope, I just need to go to God for re-enforcement. I just need to remember to go to God for replenishment when I'm getting low on calmness.

There's been times in my life when I was seeking solutions and answers, and I would call someone and they would truthfully reply, "I cannot help you." I had to keep looking.

I love Psalm 91's words "He is my refuge" so very much because the reason why God is my ultimate refuge is because God never, ever tells me: Jayne, I cannot help you.
How awesome is that?! God always helps. Always.

One of my favorite, shortest prayers is: God help me.

There are so many beautiful names of God. One is Jehovah Jireh. The translation is God: The provider of all. All the help we will ever need in our lives, God provides. All the calm we will ever need, God provides.

Angelic Blessings of God's Calmness,
Love, Jayne