>Our words should be a sanctuary to the ears that recieve them.

>

>Today’s Get Bare Tip – Own It Baby!

>The most daring journey you can make is from “Who am I?” to “I am what I am!”

>I Agree with the Right to Bear Arms…

>I don’t agree with the right to be idiots!

>Letting Go…

>What I didn’t know about letting go was that it was going to
be a daily, hourly, lifelong quest.

Sometimes it is so easy to give advice about letting go and
so hard to follow it. I held on to so many things for fear letting
go would destroy me, that I trapped myself in a panic. A panic
I couldn’t escape from, a panic that frightened me.

All I could think…

I’m going to be free… Free of everything, and I guess I’m scared and nervous.

I made a few promises to myself…

1) No matter what I would move through my fear and
anxiety when support was offered

2) I would finish whatever writing ideas I started without the fear of acceptance (financial, critical, etc.)

3) I would ‘be myself’ enthusiastically and without regret

Recovery to me was so about mastering letting go, well, actually being able to let go, understanding its nuances and its powers and then moving on.

Once you let go, you made a choice. Don’t bemoan or spend energy feeding what comes up; notice that it is tough, feel it, embrace it, but let it pass. Do not let it drag you down.

I would never have thought the ten minutes through the corn fields to get milk and eggs from the local dairy farm growing up would be replaced by a trip down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills to the Whole Foods Market. I would never have thought so many things were possible if I hadn’t taken a first step and let go of what I had known.

There is no way I could have drawn a map that would have led me to where I am.

Some of the difficulty and my personal angst would come from trying to achieve results in a ball busting straightforward linear fashion. When I let go of that which confined me or defined me I ended up where I wanted to be. Without fail.

I learned to love letting go.

Excerpted from Melanie Lutz’s THE BARE MELCESSITIES.

>Ignite Something in Your Soul

>For those of you who are not familiar with David Whyte here’s your chance to catch a glimpse into his work.

Enjoy this Poetry Party where David Whyte discusses Pablo Neruda’s La Poesia from his Poetry of Self Compassion lecture.

Brought to you by THE BARE MELCESSITIES.

For more information on David Whyte click here.

Meet Mel at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena this Wed at Noon.

>The Death Chronicles

>RIP Jean Simmons…

>Bronson and The Bare Mel!

>
Screen tough guy, Charles Bronson and Melanie Lutz’s The Bare Melcessities: Walking Out. Waking Up. Getting Bare. together again somewhere outside of Las Vegas…

John Sturges used Charles Bronson beautifully in the Western classics The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.

Here’s the tone of Bronson’s character showcasing the understanding of his limitations, sharing his truth, from The Magnificent Seven…

“We’re ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.”

Bronson as Bernardo O’Reilly responding to the Village Boy’s outburst …

“Don’t you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That’s why I never even started anything like that… that’s why I never will.”

From screenwriter William Roberts based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

>We’re Different Today.

>When the best of us is brought forth
it gives us the chance to let go of the worst of us.

“No one is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” — Alice Walker

“I’ll spread my wings and learn how to fly”

>Have a Dream

>No Limits.

“Imagine what America would be like if Martin Luther King Jr. never had a dream.”

King often said “there is a power in our hearts more powerful than the power of bullets” … and today in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s never been more important to remember.

Freedom is a commitment we make every day. A commitment to accepting everyone in all their glory and all their flaws, as brothers.

So today, open your heart and lean into its power, get comfortable with how it feels… because there is much to celebrate and much work ahead.

In tribute and remembrance here’s one of Martin Luther King’s appearances, selected by the late, great Tim Russert, on Meet the Press… with a discussion about King and the current state of politics…It includes this response to a question about how many white people attended his Sunday congregation…

“It is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not, the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

(Rev. Liston Pope, Dean of Yale Divinity School)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/23981403#23981403
Martin Luther King on “Meet The Press”

“The sermon he was going to deliver in the next Sunday were he to live, found in the effects after he was murdered was a sermon called “Why America May Go To Hell” that’s the Martin Luther Jr. with which the broad swath of America is not familiar, and they don’t understand…the articulation of a theological tradition that … doesn’t respond in hate, but it responds in prophetic anger, then ultimately Love, Love enough to speak justice to the nation…

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public”

For the first time in a long time the imagination of this country is activated. We have the space to contribute our time and talents. A space once again to stretch into new possibilities.

A power has been unleashed, a power to move mountains, the power of belief.

BE INSPIRED. BE LOVING. BE YOU. REPEAT.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Where we got it wrong. We’re going to make a correction. And get it right.

Onward…

>Meet Mel – January 27th at Noon

>It’s an honor to be booked at the oldest independent bookstore in Los Angeles to discuss and sign my book The Bare Melcessities: Walking Out. Waking Up. Getting Bare.

Wed, 01/27/2010 – 12:00pm
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, California 91101

http://www.vromansbookstore.com/melanie-lutz

Melanie Lutz takes a powerful look at the process of letting go and moving on, in the context of her recent divorce. Inch by inch, day by day, she leads readers along her path from heartache to self love and discovers that anything is possible. This illuminating self-portrait is written with immense courage, deep honesty, and integrity, and is a gift to anyone who has ever wanted more than the life they are living.