It seems funny to be wishing each other “Happy New Year” when we should be saying good-bye to this year. I’m more in the stance of “Thank you, old year.” Thank you for the provision of this year. Thank you for the opportunities that have come our way…

Last week, David Karchere said about Mary: “It is through her, and through whatever was gathered around her at the time, that there was a sufficiency of substance so that the divine could be present.” A “sufficiency of substance.”

So as we say good-bye and thank you to this year, we get to acknowledge the substance generated. At the end of a year, you can do a yearly sanctification to acknowledge with generosity and love what actually has been accomplished in this year; a review of ways in which our presence had an impact; and what was manifest as a result of the sufficiency of my generation.

There’s a story in the Bible, and I’m sure most of you know about it, where Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the Lord comes and says, “Where art thou?” In any story of victory, someone is saying, “Here am I.”

The question that often is asked before that answer comes is, “Where art thou?” Where ARE you? I’ve been pondering lately, who’s asking the question? Do we think of it as somebody on high, speaking to us, asking, “Where are you?” Or is it the finest substance within us saying, “Where ARE you?” Not in a disciplinary tone but one of inquiry. “Are you with me? Are you in heaven with me? Are you generating the finest substance you know how? Because you know how to do that—you know how you feel when you do that. You know who you are when you do that.”

I’ve spoken before about this technique called “Vertical Venting.” It’s a tool I use when lots of things are going on in my heart and mind. I consciously vent vertically, let things rise up. Venting those things takes it out of hiding and out of trying to hold it in. It can sound like, “I’m really tired. I’m really upset that so-and-so did that to me yesterday. I really don’t like that someone forgot to take care of their responsibilities…” Whatever it is, I lift it up. I often do that as a preparation to have a clean space for heaven to come into.

I had the experience today of realizing I was venting to myself. What a powerful stance that is. I was venting into the highest place I know of myself. And the finest and most fiery substance of myself was transforming that which I was venting. I didn’t have to go anywhere, I didn’t have to count on anybody, I didn’t have to find an angel somewhere who was receiving it. I didn’t have to think of some big guy in the sky who said, “I know already, Jane; I already know what’s in your consciousness.” It was a lifting of my coarser self to my finer self—all me. All that substance was mine to be transmuted and used by me.

As I was driving here, there was something on my mind that kept distracting me, so I started this vertical venting. I was saying these things out loud to get it out of my thinking, and suddenly this entire flock of birds started flying as if they were dancing right in front of me. And in the middle of this vertical venting I said, “I love those birds!” I found myself repeating it over and over: “I love those birds!” And everything that was distracting me was burned up.

What I experienced was that rich, fine, intimate place of vulnerability, of loving something so much that everything in me found home there. All the things that were in my head, distracting me, were now no big deal. This was an experience of spiritual intimacy. That vulnerable, fine vertical space allowed me to be intimate with my world. That’s the place you want to be intimate, in the finest, most beautiful part of yourself, where you speak what you love because you’re in this place of sharing the vulnerable, tender place in your heart, revealing yourself to another.

I know we all have had the experience of revealing yourself to someone that you thought was safe and precious, and feeling blasted. And it’s not necessarily because the person did anything, but because you actually tried to reveal yourself into a place where you never established your own safety, never set up heaven first. Safety has often meant, in the human experience, doing nothing so that you don’t get hurt. Safety to the divine being means holding nothing back, because it’s not yours anyway.

When you have sufficiency of your own substance, you can create and you can be intimate. If you haven’t taken the time to be intimate with yourself, to be vulnerable and reveal yourself to yourself, to these higher ranges of what is true of yourself, you will not be very skilled at being a friend. Insufficiency of personal intimacy results in being poorly skilled as a friend and you will not have the sufficiency of substance between you to create heaven on earth.

Can you trust the sufficiency of substance you’ve generated with friends to know you will be seen and you will see yourself as the one you really are, capable of delivering what is in the moment, the Word? As David said last week, out of our substance, out of our flesh, we create the reality of this world, the reality of the world. We draw substance to ourselves and manifest from that. As soon as you take yourself out of that possibility, you become a victim, a victim of what life is throwing at you. As a creator-being, you have the power to have joy in it all.

I am thrilled, as we come to the end of this year, with the variety of the voices of angels in human form that I know. I am thrilled, as we come to the beginning of this new year, to see the chorus of angels that are in my life, singing new songs, writing songs with me, bringing the freshness of the spirit of the day, which sounds harmonic, which sounds inviting, which provides a sufficiency for the presence of a womb for God.

Arms wide open,
encompassing,
holding the dark and the light,
holding night and day,
Eyes sun-lidded,
lips song-forming.

Sound escapes becoming a dove,
floods over dark of space
becoming a river of animals formed
while skies flood and spill in life….
(read from Vicki Edwards’ poem)

Happy New Year. That’s what this year will be if you say yes to that. It’s been said that Adam named the animals as they came into manifestation. Mankind names creation. We get to name together this experience. “Sounds escaping, becoming a dove.”

How beautiful is life, lived from this place, where our flesh, the flesh of our substance, of our bodies, of our thinking, of our hearts, is manifesting—manifesting God on earth because we are here. So as we release that which seems like a distraction into that which is glorious, we know the power of being able to choose, to choose the fineness and the fire, to let ALL of it, ALL that is us, serve; ALL that is us surrender and become intimate with the spirit that is on the earth today, because it IS us.

It’s not separate from us. We don’t have to go searching for it. We don’t have to find something to be intimate with and hope it will be there when we need it. That’s backwards. Let us be in it and see what happens, see what comes close, see what we get to play with, see the pleasures, see the joy, enjoy the pleasure of the company of the ones who love what you love.