Life, Love and the Everyday

When I first heard the lyrics to the song "With Arms Wide Open" by Creed, I felt the love and joy of those words pour into my heart. With arms wide open Under the sunlight  Welcome to this place I'll show you everything With arms wide open Now everything has changed I'll show you love I'll show you everything  To this day, it remains one of those songs that can stir something in my blood no matter how many times I hear it. It is a song about a man who is excited, anticipating and scared about becoming a father. I feel that is sometimes how we feel about life - going through new seasons, over rough terrain and climbing to new heights that we have never been, yet alone thought or dreamed of. When events and circumstances bring us down, it can be hard to stand still and open our arms to accept what is coming next. We worry about things we cannot change, we worry that we will disappoint the people we love through our choices or things that are beyond our...

"In dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Askaban. Your magic is working 24/7, even when you are sleeping because magic can happen everywhere, especially in our dreams. The unlikely and unthinkable becomes possible, we can see people we don't speak to anymore and we can have a treasured moment with a loved one who is in heaven. We can escape to the past or what we hope to be our future. Our dreams are like movies that we are drawn into, full of adventure, fun, truth and warnings which challenge us in turn to be aware, mindful and courageous.  Our dreams can show us things we cannot see when we are awake. Last year I fell asleep, I dreamt that I was weightless and flew out of my bedroom window before a quick descent. I woke up just before I hit the ground. (Sadly, I had no broom - so it wasn't a Harry Potter dream!) But I woke up feeling light, liberated and excited. My phone vibrated and it wa...

"I have an awesome/crazy idea that might work." I used to say - a lot.  Some of those ideas were a little crazy - but some of them worked out pretty well. Behind every crazy idea, there is a flourish of creativity and genius. Now, let me be clear - there is good crazy and bad crazy. It's just good crazy fun here, folks. With a sprinkle of magic! Now most people would think that building a theme park only a handful of years after the Great Depression ended was not just a crazy idea - but insane! Construction for Disneyland began in 1954 and was opened one year and one day later on July 17th. It was an incredible and ambitious project that would have been an intimidating undertaking, costing a whopping 17 million.  But there was something very special about the man behind it, Walt Disney knew that people needed somewhere fun to bond with family and friends. That sometimes adults wanted to play and experience joy and wonder like children. He had a ...