"Begonia Musings" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
This morning, as the first light filtered through my kitchen window, I stood still—mug of coffee in hand—gazing at my begonia in full, unapologetic bloom. Its vibrant petals, lush and alive, seemed to radiate something deeper than beauty. There, in the quiet hush of morning, with the begonia as my gentle companion, memories—some tender, some heavy—began to drift through my mind like petals caught on a breeze.
I thought about my upbringing in a fundamentalist, evangelical world. My best friend back then was a preacher’s kid, and I followed a similar path—attending an evangelical college, eventually enrolling in seminary. For a time, I earnestly sought truth within the structure of religion, believing I was walking the path of faith. But somewhere between scripture studies and dogma, between sermons and silence, a quiet fracture began to form.
It wasn’t that I stopped believing in love, in compassion, in the sacred. It was that I saw a painful dissonance between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the institutional church. The Jesus I admired fed the hungry, healed the hurting, walked with the outcasts, and taught love without condition. But the religion I was immersed in preached exclusion cloaked in righteousness, control masked as doctrine. I didn’t lose my faith. I lost my religion.
And somehow, in that breaking away, a small, gentle flame remained—a spiritual ember I didn’t quite know how to name at the time. Years later, I came across Your Erroneous Zones by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Within its pages, a simple idea cracked open my understanding: while I cannot control what happens to me, I can always control how I respond. That truth rippled out into every corner of my life, awakening a deeper awareness.
Then came Rev. Maureene Bass of Unity, a woman who spoke of spirituality as an ever-expanding path. She opened doors that had been bolted shut. All paths to God—or to the Divine, or to Truth—are valid. What matters is love. What matters is kindness. What matters is living from the inside out, guided by a deeper wisdom, a Divine Intelligence that pulses through every cell of this vast universe.
Yes, karma is real—not as punishment, but as balance. For every action, a ripple. For every kindness, an echo. And yes, I believe in the teachings of Jesus—deeply. But I do not follow the teachings of organized religion. My spirituality is lived, not memorized. It is whispered in the wind through trees, felt in morning sunlight, seen in blooming flowers and shared over coffee.
So here I sit, grounded in this beautiful now, with the begonia reminding me that life unfolds when we let it. I am a spiritual being in a human body, still on my journey of discovery, walking forward with a curious heart. And I hope—no, I believe—that peace, faith, love, and kindness can still become the bedrock of our world.
May the flowers bloom.
May the coffee taste good.
And may we each find our own way to the sacred.
~Wylddane
I thought about my upbringing in a fundamentalist, evangelical world. My best friend back then was a preacher’s kid, and I followed a similar path—attending an evangelical college, eventually enrolling in seminary. For a time, I earnestly sought truth within the structure of religion, believing I was walking the path of faith. But somewhere between scripture studies and dogma, between sermons and silence, a quiet fracture began to form.
It wasn’t that I stopped believing in love, in compassion, in the sacred. It was that I saw a painful dissonance between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the institutional church. The Jesus I admired fed the hungry, healed the hurting, walked with the outcasts, and taught love without condition. But the religion I was immersed in preached exclusion cloaked in righteousness, control masked as doctrine. I didn’t lose my faith. I lost my religion.
And somehow, in that breaking away, a small, gentle flame remained—a spiritual ember I didn’t quite know how to name at the time. Years later, I came across Your Erroneous Zones by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Within its pages, a simple idea cracked open my understanding: while I cannot control what happens to me, I can always control how I respond. That truth rippled out into every corner of my life, awakening a deeper awareness.
Then came Rev. Maureene Bass of Unity, a woman who spoke of spirituality as an ever-expanding path. She opened doors that had been bolted shut. All paths to God—or to the Divine, or to Truth—are valid. What matters is love. What matters is kindness. What matters is living from the inside out, guided by a deeper wisdom, a Divine Intelligence that pulses through every cell of this vast universe.
Yes, karma is real—not as punishment, but as balance. For every action, a ripple. For every kindness, an echo. And yes, I believe in the teachings of Jesus—deeply. But I do not follow the teachings of organized religion. My spirituality is lived, not memorized. It is whispered in the wind through trees, felt in morning sunlight, seen in blooming flowers and shared over coffee.
So here I sit, grounded in this beautiful now, with the begonia reminding me that life unfolds when we let it. I am a spiritual being in a human body, still on my journey of discovery, walking forward with a curious heart. And I hope—no, I believe—that peace, faith, love, and kindness can still become the bedrock of our world.
May the flowers bloom.
May the coffee taste good.
And may we each find our own way to the sacred.
~Wylddane
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