No Words Required

I love words. I love crafting the perfect sentence. I love bringing the reader along with me and making them feel that they are right alongside me. I do find that sometimes in life words actually get in the way. There are times when something is so powerful that words feel inadequate to express all that we are feeling. Today I decided to keep it short and sweet because that is the kind of day it is. I have chosen these images that I have captured at various points over the past year to share with you. Let them sink in, let them tell their own story and pay attention to how you feel. Allow your imagination to create it's own story from what you see.

I would love to hear your thoughts and what these pictures made you feel. Please share with me at whereisgodtoday@gmail.com.

Take time to really see today,

Kimberly

Quote of the Day:

"We must become artists in living. To live by inspiration means to sense the divine touch in everything; to enter into the spirit of things; to enter into the joy of living."

Ernest Holmes

Signs

Easter is in a few days and that reminds me that last year my birthday was on Easter. I had gone on a silent retreat for three days and "emerged" Easter morning for an overnight adventure with my friend Sharlyn whose birthday is just three days before mine. We took what our old therapist use to call an intuitive journey which is where we pack a bag and get in the car with no idea if we will turn right or left when we leave the driveway. That gives me the idea that I should do that during the course of these 40 days and share that adventure with you. But on to today's meanderings on where I found God on a rainy Wednesday in mid March. I have always had a fascination with signs. Old signs especially or hand made ones that say puppies for sale or lemonade 5 cents. For me the signs tell a story. I remember as we began our journey last April 8th I thought it would be cool to take pictures of signs along the way. The photo here is the first sign that I saw. I had to turn around and double check that I had really read what I read. What in the hell does that mean?????? It made me laugh, it puzzled me and it made me really want to meet the person or people who thought that would be a good thing to put on a sign. Is that supposed to make me feel guilty? Are they trying to tell me it is a sin to eat candy? I just can't be sure. Anyway.... it cracks me up to this day everytime I look at this photo. To talk about signs on a deeper or more symbolic level I do think we get signs all the time. Hints of where to go or what to do next. I think we can drive ourselves crazy if we consciously look for them all the time but I think if we set the intention to be mindful then we will just know when a sign is meant for us. It is like when you are at the bookstore wandering around and of course everywhere you look there are books but sometimes a certain book will seem to leap off the shelf as if to say "read me, now!". When a sign is meant for us we know it deep in our gut and we don't have to run it through the intellect. If we are doing too much thinking then we are on the wrong track. I prefer to live and feel my way into right answers. I have learned this the long and hard way.......by thinking things to death. I use to think I could figure things out intellectually and that if I just used my brain power I could come up with the right answer. I definitely used my intellect as a coping mechanism. I am so grateful now to have the realization that God is speaking directly to me and if I am thinking too much I can't hear that. God whispers is what I have come to find out. I would prefer a neon sign with a megaphone but that is never how it has worked for me. God speaks quietly and if we are to hear it we must quiet our minds. We can do this through prayer, meditation, long walks in the woods, sitting in a comfy chair with a hot cup of tea - it doesn't matter how we get quiet it just matters that we make the time. Answers come, solutions to problems seem to appear out of nowhere but they never come when I search for them. When I chase these things with my intellect they allude me. When I get quiet and rest my mind I can hear my intuition. I can hear the whisper. I can hear God. However, just to be clear, I have never, ever seen the Easter Bunny rise from the grave. How about you?
Be aware of the signs,
Kimberly

Quote of the Day:

"Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes."
Etty Hillesum

I Wore Plastic Bread Bags on My Feet

Greetings fellow travelers,
As I was falling asleep last night I was thinking about the importance of being real as I travel through these 40 days. I don't think anyone wants the pollyanna version of my experience. Day two arrived and it did not feel as sparkly as day one. Hmmm........did I want to be this real this quickly? I guess so. I am not currently living in the home or the climate that I would prefer. Most days I am very trusting that this is where I need to be right now and I will move in the perfect time. I have had a tendency to postpone happiness in my life - anyone have that problem? I save the good towels, the good dishes, the new scarf - waiting for some special time. I guess I learned this from my Grandmother who lived through the Depression. When she died we found all kinds of brand new things that she was saving for a special time and then they never got used. Isn't that crazy? It is all special. We should be breaking out the fine China when we have take out or peanut butter and jelly. Every moment we have the joy and privelege to be alive is spectacular and although it is sometimes hard to maintain that high level exuberance in every single moment I do feel that is the ultimate goal. So....back to my living situation....living here even though I have known for sometime that I would be moving has been a huge lesson for me to live in the now. To not fool myself into thinking I will be happier when.... (fill in the blank) or that some moment in the future is going to be more special than this moment I have right now. Some days this is easier than others. Today was a harder day. The cool thing is that even when I don't feel so okay with everything I am still aware that God is present. When I wipe the slate clean in my mind I can begin again. My discouragement or unhappiness is a direct result of thinking things should be different than they are. One of the best remedies for this is to put myself in a different environment. So the baby and my older son Greg and I went for a snack and a trip to church (remember - that is really Barnes and Noble.) We got to spend time with our friend Sharlyn who you will hear about and see pictures of as this journey unfolds. When we left there I heard something tell me to drive home a different way. I found myself in my original hometown of Brooktondale. I had my camera and these pictures are some of what I saw. The water is where I used to swim as a child, I can't believe that my Aunt would let my cousins and I walk down here and swim alone and then take an even further walk to the market for popsicles - ALONE. The oldest one being 11 or 12. The playground is where I went to nursery school and that is the same exact playground. I am thinking that thing must be loaded with lead paint. I am still here though. Probably because by the time I got my mittens tucked in just right to my snowsuit and my boots buttoned up perfectly it would be time to come back in. True story. I rarely made it out to play because everything had to be just right. Hmmm... those issues surface early huh? I grew up in the time where we wore rubber boots with the side clasps and before we put our feet in the boots we put them inside used plastic bread bags. We were recycling so young. It was really not too comfy and within minutes your sock was squished down and your foot was directly on the plastic. It wasn't long before that was one big sweaty mess and pretty soon the sock and the plastic bag were wadded up in the toe area of the boot and you just had your bare foot inside the nasty rubber boot. It is freaking me out just to write that. For a young girl who was trying to make a fashion statement along with having a few sensory issues it was just easier to stay inside. Can you imagine???? So here is that playground and my four year old self played there 35 years ago. I like to think about how my spirit is the same exact spirit. Sometimes I try to get a movie going in my head of my younger self and watch this young girl discover her world. It is good to love you inner child. When I hear the voice of blame or shame trying to get the best of me it helps to remember that young sweet freckled face girl who just wanted her socks to stay on her feet. I just want to pick her up and say "you will still get your chance outside and I will help you until your socks feel just right". It makes sense that I haven't always gone for the fun, imagine finally being ready to play with your friends but they are all on their way back in and now you can't go out. I am not having a pity party but it is so interesting to see how these earlier experiences begin to cloud our perception and drive our behavior. I saw myself sitting on the slide and I saw God with her big blue eyes full of wonder and her chubby little cheeks which she never worried if they were fat. She was just right and still is. The other picture is the front of the church where I was baptized. The place where my parents promised to teach me about God. In our family it was more of a ritual than anything else and for most of my early years I believed in the Sky Daddy version of God. Thank God that is in the past. The picture of the house is the very first place I ever lived. My father built that house but we haven't lived there in over 37 years. So I guess today was about going back to the beginning. It is sometimes good to take a look at your past and honor it for what it was. It is also good to know that anything we tell ourselves about the past is part fact and part fiction. Some of us spend our whole lives living in our story. This can be very limiting and confining. Nothing that happened in the past can control our future unless we allow it. I learned so much about this by reading a book called Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping. I HIGHLY recommend it. It changed the entire way I view the process of forgiveness. Please read it. I think there should be a required reading list to participate in life. They have them in college, why not the college of life? The final picture is of a closed down bar that I used to go to with my Dad. My father is a contractor and Saturdays is when he did estimates. I would go with him and when he was done we would go here. It was owned by a family friend named John. The name of the bar was Honest Johns. I would drink Shirley Temples and my father would have beer and I would play a bowling game and eat pretzels. Now I could get into a whole story about my Dad being an alcoholic and how awful to let his child sit in a bar... when really it was kind of fun and times were different then. It was an era of a certain kind of naivte' - I Dream of Jeannie, bell bottoms, casseroles and hanging out at bars with your Dad. I choose to remember those times fondly and I remember feeling really loved. So I guess that pretty much sums up this day. I know the pictures make it look like I live in Siberia but really it is just upstate New York in March. The month of gray. Gray pavement, gray trees, gray water, gray skies and sometimes gray people. I know that the sky is an eternal blue under that gray and I know spring is coming. I can feel it. The cool thing about this time of year is that for many months you can't really smell anything outside because your nose hairs are frozen together, but starting in mid March we will have days that the earth begins to thaw and there is a smell that I wish I could bottle. It smells like dirt. Dirt smells really, really good in this part of the world. I mean really good. It reminds me of my childhood. It reminds me of swimming with my cousins, eating popsicles, swinging on swings with plastic bags on my feet and drinking Shirley Temples with my Dad on Saturday afternoon. God, how I love my Dad. Thank you for my childhood with all of it's perfect imperfections.
Here's to childhood - we survived it.
Love,
Kimberly
Quote of the Day:
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." Albert Einstein

Transmissions & Falafels & Sweet Sleeping Lilly

Where to begin.....I woke up this morning to the sun shining brightly in my window which is amazing when you live in upstate New York and it has been winter for the past five months. I could hear the birds singing and there was Spring in the air. I felt such gratitude at the sounds and smells of this bright new day. I went about my morning doing my normal routine but there was a new awareness that felt really good. I would consider myself "awake" as I go through life but somehow making this committment to a bigger audience has created a deeper awareness for me. I love knowing there is another layer of love and gratitude to surrender to. I felt very excited about getting in the car and going in search of God however that might manifest. I had envisioned myself leaving the house between 10 and 11am. It turned out that 11 came and went and then 12 came and went and then 1pm came and went. I found myself getting caught up with phone calls and things that "needed" to be done and I started to feel impatient. What was going on .... I needed to go out and find God - oh yeah - God is everywhere - including my house. Silly me. I recognized this pretty quickly and reminded myself that something higher was at work creating all of these seeming interruptions so I just took a deep breath and knew that I would eventually get out the door. When the next phone call came I just thought to myself "God is calling." It was my friend Lisa and we made spontaneous arrangements to meet for a late lunch. Lisa is pictured above with my new daughter Lilly. Lisa was a sister of the heart from the moment I met her four years ago. Our friendship has deepened and expanded in countless ways and I am truly blessed to have her in my life. I was excited to spend time with her. We went to eat at a place that serves wonderful middle eastern food. The owner is a good friend of mine, he is from Syria and his falafel makes me want to cry it is so good. His food nourishes my soul every single time. Thank you dear friend. There was an older man who appeared to be from India sitting at the table next to us. He was wearing a bright yellow sweatsuit and was clearly developmentally disabled. He was bonding with Lilly and it was beautiful to witness the exchange of love between souls that required no words. While we were eating our friend Kris stopped by for a quick visit. Not long after an old friend I had not seen in over two years happened to walk by with her young daughter and ended up joining us. After our bellies were full we went for a walk in the cool air. We then "bumped" into our friend Jill and then an old classmate also named Lisa. It occurred to me later that those people were exactly who I was supposed to be photographing. Hey.... it's my first day on the job! It also occurred to me that had the day went according to my timing I would not have bumped into any of these people. God's timing, not mine??? I guess so. A good reminder to practice letting go of agendas and trust. We went to the bookstore for some tea. We refer to the bookstore as church. If you hear me say I am going to church that is code for Barnes and Noble. I often laugh if I get a call while at "church" and I will tell the person on the other line that I am at church and people nearby will give me a look like - "you liar" - pretty funny. After the bookstore I was headed home but decided to make a quick stop to fill Lilly's bottle up with milk. I even warmed it up in their microwave knowing that she falls sound asleep to a warm bottle. She sometimes gets fussy on the way home and it was close to bedtime. Thank God I did because just a few miles down the road something went wrong with my transmission and I found myself in the middle of four lanes of traffic and a car that would not budge. How do you get out of a car in the middle of this craziness? Especially in the dark with a baby. I decided the safest thing was to just stay put and I turned my four way flashers on. I wondered aloud how God might show up. No time like the present to TRUST! It was just a few minutes and a police officer came up behind me and helped me get the car in reverse and then I was able to get it into drive again. He gave me some advice on what to do if it happened again and sent me on my way. Thank you to all police officers who risk their lives for complete strangers every single day. He got out of his car in the dark in the middle of busy traffic to help me - sending him love as I write this. I wish I had a photo of him too. I drove another three or four miles and again I was stranded in the middle of a busy highway and my car would not move. I put the flashers on again and was able to slowly get onto the shoulder. I had the awareness that this was no accident in the midst of this potentially high stress situation. I was able to turn off the highway and get myself safely into a parking lot. From there I used my cell phone to get a ride home. While waiting for my ride I had a little private picnic with my left over falafel and baklava looking up at the stars and my sleeping baby and feeling deep, deep gratitude. I was feeling pretty happy that although I had tried to share that food earlier with our friend Kris that she had turned it down. Lilly was peacefully sleeping in the back seat thanks to the milk I had stopped to buy. When I did that I thought I was saving myself from listening to 20 minutes of fussing when in reality she would have been hungry and crying while I was stranded in the middle of the highway but instead she was blissfully unaware. My awareness to take pictures of all the ways God appeared in human form today was a little off the mark but my awareness of gratitude was amped up on full blast. Grateful for falafel (fresh and leftover), grateful for listening to my intuition for something as basic as a carton of milk, grateful for bumping into old friends, grateful for police officers, grateful to the person who thought up four way flashers, grateful to the people who went around me without beeping their horns, grateful for cell phones and parking lots and a safe ride home. I must confess that earlier today while trying to leave the house I found myself thinking that something grandiose needed to happen so I could start day one off with a big bang. I laugh at that now when the very purpose of this project is to show the presence of God in everything from a catepillar to the Grand Canyon. That right there is why many people think they are not having a direct experience of God. When we are waiting for the grandiose or the miracle we forget that it is already a miracle. The miracle is not just to be alive or to awaken but to stay awake. As Michael Beckwith says...."you are the miracle, you are the joy, you are the peace, you are the love. When you walk into a room you bring those things with you." So I am beyond happy to be tucked in with my jammies, my down comforter, my laptop, my candles lit and my baby sleeping by my side. Sweet dreams until tomorrow.

Love,

Kimberly

Quote of the Day:

"When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path to summer." Helen Schucman

Day 1

Hello -
It is 2:15pm here on the east coast and I have been aware of God in a variety of ways all morning. I am now headed out to run some errands and tonight I will share with you what I have seen, felt or heard on the first day of my adventure. My own awareness has been so high today and I am feeling incredibly light in my being and full of anticipation and joy.
With love,
Kimberly

Where is God?

Dear friends,
Welcome to what I know will be a very inspiring and exciting adventure. I am so glad you are here. I first want to be clear about this blog and the upcoming movie - "Where is God?" - the hope is to inspire others to ask this question to themselves and search for their own answers. The intention is to spread love and joy as far as possible. I am a fellow seeker on the path not someone claiming to have the answers. I have been a seeker as long as I can remember, asking big questions and looking for the answers. I can only share with you my own experience and that of others who are willing to join in this project. It is meant to be uplifting and thought provoking. If God is not a word you feel comfortable with then feel free to replace it with any word that works for you - The Divine, The Universe, Spirit, Mother Nature - it doesn't matter one iota. I love the word God so I use it.

What I want to share with you is how this project got started. In May of 2007 I attended The Revelation. This is an annual conference with Dr. Michael Beckwith, leader of the Agape Spiritual Center in Los Angeles. I had no idea that weekend would change the course of my entire life. One of the speakers during that weekend was James Arthur Ray. He is a dynamic and engaging speaker and I was familiar with his work. He said something during his talk that really struck me. It was this: "In a study of the religious, 90% (including clergy) said they had not had a direct experience of God." I knew I had just heard something important but I did not know why. For weeks after that I kept hearing that statement over and over in my mind. What did that mean exactly? What was a direct experience of God? Have I ever had one? Could it be possible that these people were having an experience of God and did not know it? How could people that we look to as authorities on God not have any direct experience of God? The questions went on and on. I did not have answers but I pondered this every single day. Several weeks after the conference I was doing my meditation and I suddenly saw all kinds of people holding up signs with letters on them. The people were young and old and represented all cultures. The scene was kind of foggy and the letters were scrambled but as I looked closer and the people started arranging themselves in a certain way, I began to see a word forming. The word was EVERYWHERE. In an instant I saw this scene as the ending to a movie. I saw the word EVERYWHERE as the answer to the question "Where is God?". This all happened in a flash. It was instantaneous and it can best be described as pure inspiration coming directly from God because there is no way I would have thought of this with my own mind. I have no experience making films. I have steered clear of technology as much as possible in this modern world. I have questioned and wondered about God all of my life and in no way would I have ever thought I had something of value to share on such a vast and infinite subject. What I have learned since that moment last summer is that when an idea is given to you by God you can resist and turn away and try to avoid it but it will come back over and over until you have no choice but to listen or go crazy. That is what has been happening for months. Do I really have free will??? If you could hear my inner dialogue it would go something like this: Why me? What if people think I am saying I have the answers when in reality I know nothing? What if they write me mean e-mails? What if the intention is misunderstood? What if people laugh at me? What if my family thinks I have taken the ultimate plunge into craziness? What if I lose all of my friends? I have received no answers to these questions and I think the reason is that God has no time to entertain my nonsense. While the voices were going off I was still able to read "This Thing Called You" by Ernest Holmes and I received confirmation of what I was envisioning for this project. I read the following - "...there is no place where you leave off and God begins." I could feel something lift up inside of me as I recognized the truth of his words deep in my being. I thought back to the study of the religious and realized that we are indeed experiencing God in every moment. There is no place where I am that God isn't. If someone is not experiencing God it is not because God isn't there. God is in the joy and the grief, the well and the sick, the rich and the poor. If we can resist the urge to label everything as good or bad we will begin to see that God is always there. If we look back over our own lives we often see that what seemed to be an overwhelming obstacle became one of our greatest gifts. As I have come to understand that there are no accidents in this universe I have been able to let go of trying to control all the details of my life. I now see everything as perfect for my learning at that particular time. This has allowed me to be in the flow of life and to trust God. So............I am taking the plunge into this project and I am nervous and thrilled and overwhelmed all wrapped into one little bundle. I want to use this blog as well as the videos I will post on You Tube to share with you what I have found so far and what I continue to discover. It is my intention to spread love and joy and inspiration as far as possible. I have found that it is really quite simple. I have been given an inspired idea and I have a choice - act or not. It occurred to me earlier this week that this idea is truly beautiful and if I do not take some immediate action the idea will move on into another person's conciousness and I will find myself saying in the future..."Hey, that was my idea!" When in reality I have been offered the opportunity to take action on an inspired idea but the idea itself does not belong to me.
What you are reading is the result of my decision to take big, bold, immediate action. I am trusting that everything is already being arranged for this idea to become real. Starting Monday, March 17, 2008 I will be going out into the world everyday for 40 days and looking for people and images and stories that reveal the truth that God is right where I am and right where you are in every moment. The key lies in our awareness. Each day I will document and photograph what I find. I am so excited and I can hardly wait until Monday. When the 40 days have passed the material will be edited onto a DVD which will enable this material to travel the globe. I know this is something I have to do and if you are reading this right now please know that it is no accident and ask yourself how you can be a part of this amazing adventure. If you have something to share please e-mail me at whereisgodtoday@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you. I am excited and scared which I hear is exactly how these divine ideas work. So here I go........I invite you to come along with me.
With Great Love and Extravagant Blessings,
Kimberly

P.S. I would like to thank some people I have never met but have influenced me greatly and mentored me day after day with their books, blogs, websites, audio tapes, seminars etc. They are Joe Vitale, Dr. Hew Len, Michael Beckwith, James Arthur Ray, Bill Harris, Pat O'Bryan, Ernest Holmes, Dr. Sue Morter, Iyanla Vanzant, Jack Canfield, Janet Atwood, Chris Atwood,Dr. Barbara King, Rev. Deborah Johnson, Mike Dooley, Lisa Nichols and last but certainly not least the comforting, inspiring and uplifting music of Ester Nicholson, Nicki Harris and Rickie Byars Beckwith.

P.P.S. Did I forget to say Thank you God????? THANK YOU GOD. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.