May this be the best year so far for you, for me, for the USA and for the world!  And for anyone I left out.

 “CONSULTATION WITH CAROL LYNN”–MAY I BE OF HELP TO YOU OR YOURS?  With the crunch of 2007 finished, I am able to devote more time to something I truly enjoy: helping people who could use me as a consultant, sounding board, brainstormer, encourager or coach.  Might I be of value to you and your family in the challenge of discovering you have a gay child?–helping you look at the challenge of a gay-straight marriage?–encouraging you in that writing project you’ve been putting off?–talking through the grief and joy of a spiritual crisis?  For further information see http://clpearson.com/consultations.htm.  And for PRIVATE RETREATS see http://www.clpearson.com/CLPRetreatFLYER.pdf.

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FREE COPY OF NO MORE GOODBYES: Circling the Wagons Around our Gay Loved Ones to the first ten people who order an autographed copy of any of the 25 books at http://www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm; free copy of both NO MORE GOODBYES and FACING EAST to anyone who orders fifty dollars or more in autographed books through January 12th.                                       

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 STORY: THAT AMAZING “REFRESH” BUTTON.  I was taught something important a couple of years ago by my computer.  It was the end of January, and as I checked my personal website, I saw that the Christmas decorations were still there.  My webmistress and friend Sandy had decided to put them up for the holidays, and there they still were.  Well, this is embarrassing, I thought.  I called Sandy and said, “So can we take the Christmas decorations off the website now?”

 “Oh, Honey,” she said, “I took those down some time ago.”  (Sandy lives in Texas and she calls me Honey.) 

 “Now, Sandy,” I said, “I’m sitting here in front of the screen right now, and I’m staring at a candy cane.  The decorations are still up.”

 “Oh, I know what’s the matter, Honey!  It’s all those cookies you got stored in your computer.  They just hang on to everything.  They send you onto the old pathways they’ve built up habits around, and they pull up the old website, not the new one.  Now, here’s what I want you to do.  Right click.  You see where it says, ‘refresh’?  Go ahead and left click on ‘refresh.’”

I clicked “refresh” and–lo and behold, the Christmas decorations were gone!  Well, they had actually been gone for some time, but my system had been stuck in the past.

 I have a feeling that there is a lot of Now that I am not accessing because my personal system is stuck in the past, held there by those “cookies” of regret, resentment, guilt, judgment, feeding me outdated images that I chew on daily and compulsively.  Maybe it’s the same for you.

 I wonder who and what we might see differently if we practiced radical forgiveness, clicked the refresh button and saw each person without their past?–saw each situation as inviting new and exciting possibilities?–saw the person in the mirror for the miracle she or he truly is?  How refreshing would that be?

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Thanks to all who wrote telling how they loved last month’s story about the messages in rocks at the top of the hill.  Just sold that story to my favorite magazine, “Spirituality and Health,” and it will be in their March/April issue.  For a fun photo of me and the rocks see http://www.clpearson.com/photos.htm.

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 GREAT STORY OF LIFE CHANGED BY NO MORE GOODBYES: Just received this from Anne Marie Nielson, whose moving story appears in NO MORE GOODBYES (making a wedding dress for her lesbian daughter’s partner for their commitment ceremony):