"Fall in the River Immediately"

This blog post, Stepping Stone Sunday, speaks to me.
Patti Digh says, " Fall in the river immediately...We lose so much by anticipating, fearing, trying to stay dry. Life is wet and now. Messy, sweet messy. Get soaked to the very bone! Then falling becomes less fearful."

Tomorrow is Sunday. I am moving to a new place, a new home.

I am excited, but there is a small undercurrent of fear about what may or may not happen in the days and weeks to come.

So much to do, so much at stake.

But the reason I am so excited is because this is a risk.

It is a thrill to finally follow my heart, and my heart has been speaking to me loudly in the past few weeks. It may be a risk, but, for me, there is no other choice.

While pulling out my old journals and trying to decide what to do with them, I haphazardly opened to a page that I wrote about a week before I went to college, moving away from home for the first time. I had so many fears, so many uncertainties plaguing my mind. I remember that time quite distinctly because I remember thinking later, I did all of that worrying for nothing.

Life happens whether I worry about it or not, and it almost never goes the way I think it will.

It is usually in the days and weeks right before the transition that I do most of my worrying, (aka, obsessive thinking.) I want this new, uncertain thing to get here already so that I can stop thinking about it and get on with my life.

I was feeling that way a few days ago, my mind circling all the possibilities, the numerous ways things could happen. Suddenly, I didn’t want to do that again. So instead, I drove to the park, and I sat in the grass by the lake while the sun was making its descent in the sky.

I just sat there, and I looked, and I listened, and I felt, and I smelled, and I breathed deeply everything that I saw, heard, felt, and smelled.

Slowly, my mind cleared of all the useless clutter. And I felt very peaceful. I wondered why I didn’t figure this out before—the power of nature to clear my mind and remind me that everything will be okay.

So tomorrow, I am moving to a new place. I don’t know what will happen, or how it will happen, but I have an idea. And my heart has a vision.

Beyond that, I will keep reminding myself to clear my mind of all the useless clutter.

Because a month from now, a year from now, I will know that there was nothing to worry about in the first place.

Dropping Keys

A poem from my favorite Persian poet, Hafiz:

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows
While the sage
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

desensitized

we are desensitized
blinded
finding and losing
throwing away
tin-rust dreams
eaten by time
and sighs of surrender
cut into the dough and yeast
of a moonless life--

where do you go when you lose the force
that pulls the tides from under your feet,
the certainty and surrender of direction?

we cease our belief
in fairies and dragons
while secretly wishing for heart-pounding mysteries
to fold us into complete abandon,
transform us into shepherds
and sheperdesses
with magic residing under our fingernails.

we pound ourselves out on rocks,
never broken,
only molded
with time and movement
and the hottest fire,
we are smooth
and fiercesome, at the same time,

if we could only see.

failing and building
failing and inventing
new life.
we are fallible and infallible
darkness and light
The beams in our eyes
are always stronger than we know.

Our only true failure
is the thought
that we have failed at all.

A Twinge in My Heart

I am participating in an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.

***UPDATE***
I actually wrote and posted this short poem earlier this morning, before I looked to see what the prompt today was. It seems to have answered the above question before I even knew what it would be.

A sudden thought, a twinge in my heart:
I want what you want for me God.
Because your ways are Beautiful
and Mighty
and Glorious
and I marvel at your Majesty
working in my life
all around me
the way you speak to me
your Spirit moving within my heart and Soul
causing me to want more
of You
and like a bird
I rise higher and higher
on the gusts of wind
you send my way.

I Am Good Enough

I am participating in an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future.

“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

At any given point in time, you’re only one thought away from changing your thinking. What thought can you change today?

I have so many thoughts that I am working on changing. It is tough sometimes to un-root all the bad habits, the negative thoughts that underlie my life and that I’m not always even aware of because I’ve had them for so long!

But today, in this moment, what would I change?

Immediately it comes to mind, the thought that I am not good enough. Perhaps “hell” is always comparing myself to people who seem to do life so much better than I am.

These past few weeks, I have been learning to accept myself the way I am, right now, in each and every moment. I am accepting my flaws, loving them, especially for what they keep teaching me. Because no one is perfect, and while I have never wished or tried to be “perfect,” I am seeing that perfect is boring. Sure, I’m not so great at small talk, and I’ve had plenty of awkward conversations and more embarrassing moments than I care to remember. But that is a part of who I am.

I have always been shy ever since I was a little girl, a trait I have not been able to shake no matter how hard I have tried. So finally, I’m accepting it. Yes, I am shy. But I am going to talk to people anyway. And it may feel like I fail at it, like it could have gone way smoother, but I am going to keep doing it anyway.

Teach Me About Love

I am participating in an online initiative and 30 day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“Books are the best of things, well used. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a writer, your only duty is to be original, to inspire, to put something new on paper. Don’t be reasonable – your job is to to fire up people’s imaginations, to give them permission to dream, and to lift their heads up to the incredible sight of the stars. They may forget what you wrote about – but they won’t forget how you made them feel.
It’s your turn now. Dream, be unreasonable and write what comes to you for 15 minutes.

****

Life is sacred. But how does one live a sacred life? Every day, I keep reminding myself to live in the present, to “be here now,” to not worry about the future and what it may or may not hold. There is so much that I want, but if I dwell on what I do not have yet, or that which is hard to come by, I miss out on all the moments happening underneath my nose.

This is a challenge for me. Be content right now, accepting myself as who I am in this moment. It is a challenge to be happy when the guy I want to know better seems to be out of my reach. It is a challenge to be peaceful when I am not confident in my own words, thoughts, and actions, when I am fearful of taking risks. Because what would happen if I actually got what I wanted? What if I didn’t want it anymore? What if I hurt people? Disappoint them? But the other question begs, “What if you don’t?”

And so here I am, plunging into the great unknown, trusting that the One who made me will lead me through troubled waters onto steady ground. I have several risks I am about to take, but I do not want to say too much because the time has not come to make them real. But I cannot ignore my heart’s leading, the intuition that prods me in one direction or the other. I’ve ignored it before, many times, and my own ignorance caused me great heartache, unnecessary misery.

Nearly two months ago, I asked God to teach me about love. Because I am more clueless than anyone. I felt as if God laughed and said, “Finally! It’s about time!”

It struck me as funny that I have never thought that precise thought before—I have never asked God to teach me about love, somehow as if God and love are separate things. But when I said this thought, I felt God laugh, and my eyes stung with tears. There was a deep pang in my chest as I wondered at the enormity, yet simplicity of such a request.

Now here I am, two months later, and I am simply amazed, humbled, and gratified at all the things God has been teaching me. He has been easing me into it, but the message is clear…He is not merely going to “teach” me about love. He is going to fill my life with it so that I experience it in all its glory, in all its many forms. Just wait, He says. There is much more to come.

Perhaps the hardest thing He has called me to do, aside from accepting such boundless love, is to give it away with my arms stretched wide and all the generosity I can muster.

It requires, in every moment, a shifting of my thoughts from the darkness of my past, to the heights and glory of His all-consuming purpose.

Fifefly

I wasn't sure how to go about it,
or what to ask,
or if you'd even answer.
The blue in your eyes throws me off every time,
and I'm left hanging on the space in between
watching the words from your lips
and pretending that I really am on the ground.

I couldn't be sure what to say
or why my hands were shaking,
my words stuck in my throat like a fat rabbit
in a tiny hole,
or why my heart beat faster than
bolts of lightning crashing down trees.

Your voice, it lifts me every time,
and my soul tries to catch it
like a butterfly in a net
or a firefly in my hands,
but instead it catches me
and throws me to the place
of never knowing
where I stay
in the middle,
the air beneath the air.
And there, I am content.

This is My Hope

You know what I find amazing about God? He doesn't belong to any one religion. As much as we'd like to think so, we can't own Him. We create all these little puny boxes, and this one's labeled "Christianity" and that one's labeled "Jewish" and that one over there is "Muslim" and right here we've got an "unbeliever" in whatever sense of the word. But what a lot of people overlook is: God is in all the boxes. But most of all, He is outside the boxes too. And once you climb out of your particular tiny box you've been cooped up in all your life, you'll see that He's a lot bigger than you ever imagined. And you'll see that He doesn't care what's inside of your box, because whether you're outside or in, He is working there. But if you choose to stay inside that box, there is a good chance you'll never see the larger picture. You'll never experience freedom and a love that embraces all things. You'll never truly grow, because that box is cramping your roots. And you're roots are trying desperately to escape the walls you're enclosed in, and if you don't give your roots that freedom, parts of you will die. Your joy, your light, your soul. If you want to find God and free your soul, climb a mountain, deconstruct that box, float down every river you come to, take every path that calls your name. Because wherever you go, God is there. And wherever God is, there you are.