The Beginning

Hello My Friends,

It’s nice to connect with you in this new way. I’m excited to write this blog for the next 40 days, as I expect revelations and insights, every day, from all of us. Insights about what you ask??? Well let’s find out…

Around my 25th birthday I had a Vision of having a baby. Around my 28th birthday, I had a Vision telling me, in no uncertain terms, to be a minister. As there is no clear path to becoming a mother, I poured my energy and intention into becoming a minister…and 9 years after that Vision, I happily became the senior minister of the Celebration Center for Spiritual Living, the church I was attending when I had that Vision 9 years earlier. Wow.

And what else happened that first year of ministry? I got married and pregnant…all at once, both Visions were fulfilled, along with a new relationship…I was in complete overwhelm. Not to mention the fact that I had been training and preparing myself to be a minister for 9 years, and had spent little time preparing myself for motherhood.

Julian was 8 months old when I left my position as senior minister. My next thought was part-time, asst. ministry, and that’s what took me to the Oakland Center for Spiritual Living and working with Rev. Joan Steadman. Great job, but ministry isn’t ever part-time and there was Julian…I kept missing birthday parties, and feeling not present even when I was present…and I felt that way for ministry too. So I left that job, sure that in surrendering my life to God, to this Infinitely Loving and Wise Presence, everything would effortlessly shift into place…just as it had for so many years. It didn’t.

This past year, I just couldn’t let go of trying to figure out how motherhood would fit in with/work with, ministry…ministry being my base that which I have known I have to do no matter what. It is the way I have been asked by God to serve the world; I couldn’t just drop it. Then 2 weeks ago I realized something really important…Julian is more important to me than anything else in the world, including ministry…in fact, in my heart, ministry is a far, far second to Julian. Why, I wondered, have I not been living in alignment with my heart?

As soon as I shifted, allowing myself to let go of ministry totally, and be totally focused on God’s Vision of Her Life as mother as me…suddenly I realized I’ve been getting visions all along, since Julian was an infant, but I just ignored them because they weren’t fitting into my ministry preconceived ideas.

I have run from my home, from being a homemaker, and yet here what this Infinite Intelligence has been revealing to me is make my home my ministry. It’s the Center of ministry for me, it is from this place of Home that I serve…the whole “my body is God’s temple”, expanded into our home is our church, our ashram, our sangha, our temple, our holy sacred site, where we consciously live in love, play and service to the One.

Happy, happy, happy, I can’t believe that God’s Will for my life is what my heart has longed for my whole life!! And yet, with all the joy of this revelation came the practical realization that I’m far more prepared to speak in front of hundreds of people than I am to create a sacred home. The resistance is amazing. It’s unfamiliar, unknown…who knew for this one time introvert, ministry would feel more safe than creating a home.

So here I have a blog dedicating these next 40 days, until Christmas Eve, to jumpstart me in consciously creating a sacred home. And our home, the Hawkins Quigley home, is your home, thus your wisdom, humor; revelations are all welcome to join me on this journey. Thanks for joining me and let’s have some fun!!!!



Oh, and…. on a whole other note: why do I hear so much about steroid use in baseball and other sports, but hear nothing about steroid use in football or basketball? What’s up with that?