Years ago I saw the movie 'State and Main'.  In one scene the main character, who is filming a movie in a small provincial town, asks a local woman what they 'do for fun around here'.  Her reply really struck me and has stayed with me:

"Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment." 

So after years of that percolating in me, I have at long last decided to set out on an adventure to see how much fun I can make, for the rest of my life!  Making fun, rather than trying to find fun or seek entertainment, I feel is perhaps one of the most excellent choices I have made.  It is available not only on the weekend, on a night out, or at a party or event, but anytime we choose.  Making fun is being play-full, or full of playfulness, and connecting to this nature in me feels totally integral to the process of falling madly in love with myself, and everyone around me!  I used to seek out my 'fun friends' thinking I needed them for this fun-making activity.  Oh yes, I still want to play with these experts of fun, my newly identified mentors, but why leave the burden on them?  What had come to feel like a limited pool, I am now sensing as a vast ocean of un-tapped fun-making-ness in me!  I sense it in you, too.

Of course I have made lots of fun in my life, but never since my childhood have I made such a conscious commitment to the living of it.  I also admit that in the past I sometimes looked for fun as a distraction from myself, or sought it out through altering myself with substances.  While that sort of fun still felt titalating, there were often some not so fun consequences.  I personally am now jiving with making some pure, clean, in-connection-with-me sort of fun.  Will this be easy?  Sometimes yes, other times I may need a bit of help to remind me.  Thankfully, I do not travel alone, as I have the great fortune of living with a 10 year old boy and an 8 year old girl, who are true experts in this sort of fun-making field.  For this piece of writing my other companion is Dr. Seuss, but any other eager playmates are welcome to come along as well!  I know many of you have been walking this road for a while......your insights on mastering self-loving, fun-loving, playful living are requested!  

I felt to end with sharing this as, although entertainment, the Mahna Mahna guy rocks it out as my fun-making maniac hero.  En-joy!!

Most every day I see the words “IN GOD WE TRUST” on the dollar bills that pass back and forth between my hands and those of others.  Sadly, as a people on this planet, we have far more distrust of each other than trust.  Yet deep within myself, I feel that I want to both trust, and be trusted.  If we are to evolve into truly living as a brotherhood on this planet, we need to begin to trust again. So I have been studying myself and feeling what it is to trust or not trust, and am evolving into an energetic understanding of the meaning of the word. I notice that when I trust someone, I am expansive and open in my body.  This feels delicious, awesome, and of benefit to my physiology as well, allowing me to be tender and gentle within.  When I distrust someone, I can’t help but contract back from them.  This feels hard and heavy, and physiologically I sense the contraction on all my vessels, tissues and organs.  Coming back to the saying on our dollar bill brings us to the crux of the issue.  It comes down to whether we understand God to be outside of us, or experience God within us.  For me, the latter is truth, and for all human beings equally.  So to say “IN GOD WE TRUST” is equivalent to saying “IN THE INNER-MOST ESSENCE OF ALL WE TRUST”.  What I trust in another is not that they will necessarily never do anything that could be hurtful or harmful to me, but that who they are at their essence is love.  If that is so, then I choose to try to the best of my ability (no perfection here!  It is not possible to be this all the time, but it can be the intention) to not contract back from anyone.  Unlike the common understanding of trust that it "takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair", the kind of trust I refer to needs no building or repairing, and can not truly be broken. 


I find there are two choices that then make that kind of trust possible.  The first is to choose to trust, without doubt, that I too am of love, and to claim that. When the unfolding of love becomes a bodily experience, a strong reference point develops within.  One gift inherent in this experience is that of beginning to be able to feel that same jewel in every other being.  This is the second choice – to first connect with that inner-most of each person we meet.  Once we do, we may also observe ways in which they may not be allowing the expression of this soulful nature. When we choose to do this, it then becomes easier to accept them just as they are, easier to not need them to behave in any particular way, easier to not absorb energy from the outside of us, and easier to truly trust in the essence of them.  This does not mean that we would then choose to still engage with someone who is being abusive.  It is self-loving to want more than that, and so we may choose to have expression with some more than with others, but the minute we contract away from anyone, we actually hurt our self.  Making a choice to not engage directly with someone when heart-felt intuition tells us that they may be harmful or dangerous is self-honoring.  Yet it is still possible to trust through feeling the essence of the person, while also choosing to avoid an interaction based on observing their choice to not allow themselves to be this in expression.  This way of being helps me to also become really honest with myself and notice when I too am not expressing from my inner-heart, and then knowing there is a choice in that moment to re-connect. This is amazing energy to explore in and feel for ourselves the possibility of living in this way.  It is through feeling this in our own body that it is experienced as truth, rather than an idea or a belief.

I want to share a true story that exemplifies how miraculous it can be to choose to see everyone as a being of love whose essence is trust-worthy.  It is the story of Larry Trapp, Cantor Michael Weisser and Julie Weisser.  In 1991, the Weissers moved to the town of Lincoln, Nebraska where Cantor Weisser was to work at a local synagogue.  Lincoln was also home to Larry Trapp, known as the ‘Grand Dragon’ of the Ku Klux Klan.  As the Weissers were moving into their new home they received a call.  The person on the other end said “You will be sorry you ever moved in, Jew Boy!”  Similar phone calls and hate mail continued to arrive at their home, and the police suggested that it was likely the work of Larry Trapp.  Trapp, they found out, was severely diabetic and in a wheelchair.  Julie Weisser, while deeply disturbed by the evil Trapp was expressing, was also struck by how isolated and alone he must be, stuck in all of his hatred.  Michael Weisser began to call Trapp and leave messages. 
Some of the messages are below:

"Larry, why do you hate me? You don't even know me, so how can you hate me?"

"Larry, do you know that the first laws Hitler's Nazis passed were against people like yourself who had physical deformities, physical handicaps? Do you realize you would have been among the first to die under Hitler? Why do you love the Nazis so much?"

"Larry, when you give up hating, a world of love is waiting for you,"

After one of these messages, Larry Trapp picked up the phone. 
He yelled at Weisser to stop harassing him, and Weisser replied by
saying:

"Well, I was thinking you might need a hand with something, and I wondered if I could help, I know you're in a wheelchair and I thought maybe I could take you to the grocery store or something."  
 
This kindness from the very person he was persecuting began to wake Trapp up.  After this, Trapp began to get more and more confused and remorseful for how he had been living.  He called the Weissers and said "I want to get out, but I don't know how."  Thus began an amazing friendship between the Weissers and Larry Trapp.  He denounced the klan, wrote apologies to many people, and realized that we are all one clan.  His health deteriorated so much that the Weissers took him in to their home and cared for him until the end of his life.  He died holding their hands.  There is a book written about this story called Not by the Sword: How a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman by Kathryn Watterson.  This is an amazing testament about what can happen when we continue to trust the love that resides even in someone who has run so much evil and done so much harm as Larry Trapp.  So the next time you notice what it says on our dollar bill, you may choose to feel that nature in the person you are exchanging it with, and in yourself, and trust.