Meet my Dear Friend Denise

Denise Gibel Molini is, to me, first and foremost a huge blessing. She is a true original and one-of-a-kind, in the best kind of way. Our life paths first crossed twelve years ago, and she has enriched my life ever since.

Here’s Denise:

The smile you see here is real, but well-earned. Denise has many gifts, but seems to have paid a price for them, as those that really feel always do. She understands and approaches life as a journey of the Spirit, but that is no kind of cop-out. Like me, she wages a wearying battle against depression. Her life is not always easy. But (sometimes without words) we remind one another of what we know in our hearts: that nothing in our experience of life is without a reason. That knowledge, carried still and small within, can make the unendurable bearable.

Because yes, there is always tommorow. And may it be a new day!

She is an author, artist, teacher, lecturer, healer, astrologer. And oh yes, a mother. Here she is with Richard and Evelyn:

Sometimes we head out on adventures together: to wade in the shallows at Bear Cut out on Key Biscayne, or to paint by the Bay in the dark of night. One night we took out our easels and a couple of canvases and painted like mad people, by the light of kerosene lantern, and forgot about life for a while.

That night Denise snapped this shot of yours truly.

Part of the reason I felt to bring Denise and her spirit into my web log is to express gratitude. I’ve grown to realize that gratitude is more than a feeling. It is on some deeper level a spiritual practice, packed with its own power and charged with a mysterious capacity to help us shift things into a perspective that always opens rather than closes. It is impossible to feel true gratitude, I believe, and to be genuinely unhappy in the same moment.

And so nothing would make me happier than for you to take a moment to think about the people in your life, and to consciously bring to mind the gratitude that may be lying dormant within you, and see what happens. The press and crush of life, and its constancy, have a way of making us forget.

And there may be nothing better that you have to do right now, at least for a few moments, than to consciously focus on the gifts in your life. Especially the people. Most especially, the ones that you carry in your heart, and that carry you.

Good Endures 2001 Denise Gibel Molini

Please take a moment to visit the latest posting on Denise’s web log, The Growing Field, at:

http://the-growing-field.blogspot.com/2008/01/value-of-man.html

Thank you, God, for the gift of friendship. Thank you, God, for my Denise.