Sundays are for remembering how much I love the world – this world, with all its sorrows & impossible acts of kindness. May your Sunday offer what renews your own connection to your soul-awareness, may it offer you a chance to fall in love, again, with your life. ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer
For those of you “new here,” let me explain:Day of Rest posts are intended to support my effort to cultivate rest in my life, (I’m not very good at it — taking care of myself, slowing down, resting). In my effort to be better at this, I’m keeping a sabbath day in my life, a day of prayer and rest, of presence and mindfulness, ease and love, and on these days I’d like to offer you, kind and gentle readers, something that might help you in that same pursuit.
I am having a slow and lazy Sunday. I meditated and wrote first thing this morning. After a long walk with Eric and the dogs, I went to yoga, a class taught by my friend, one of my favorite teachers. I was shocked when I signed in to see I hadn’t been there in three months. I fell asleep during shavasana, so when I came home, I took a nap — for 2.5 hours! I was hungry then, so I ate some watermelon. When it is in season, I can’t get enough of it, so crisp and wet and sweet. I had some lunch and a big glass of cold water, and then came here to write a post, back in my bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon.
Since beginning work on my Self-Compassion Saturday project, the Universe has been bombarding me with messages about self-compassion, helping me to focus on this important concept, this essential practice. Everywhere I look, people are talking about it, sharing links, books and articles and quotes and podcasts. Here are a few I’d like to share with you today, on this day of rest:
All You Need Is Love — of Self! by Dawn Gluskin on Huffington Post. She refers to it as self-love, but I think it applies in a conversation about self-compassion.
It’s that last one that really got me thinking. You see, right now I am reading Kristin Neff’s book Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, or at least I am trying to read it. I don’t seem to have time to read lately, and there are a lot of things I want to be reading. Then I realized this morning I did have time, but one thing needed to change to make space, so I made the pronouncement to Eric: I am not watching TV this week, (he’ll keep me honest). This has happened before. We once went for a full year without, and haven’t had cable TV for many years. I watch less than average, but it is still an hour or two in my day that I can free up for reading. It’s the thing I decided to do, both to rest and to practice self-compassion.
Do you have something in your life that is mucking up the works? Something you could let go of for awhile? Give yourself some space, show yourself some kindness — I am wishing you that freedom, today and always.
4. This quote from Kate Courageous, “Safety is an illusion we invoke, in order to grasp onto another illusion–control,” and this one, “Control is just another expression of fear, after all.”
5. Poetry (the good news and the bad news):
As you unfold as an artist,
just keep on,
quietly and earnestly,
growing through all that happens to you.
You cannot disrupt the process more violently
than by looking outside yourself for answers
that may only be found by attending to your innermost feeling.
~Rainier Maria Rilke
6. Have I told you lately how much I adore Anne Lamott? She posted this on Facebook this week:
But what I believe, and what my moderately left–and right–wing Christian brothers and sisters believe, is that Jesus preached a gospel of radical sacrifice, of giving away everything we possibly can–our time, our money, our prayers–to the have-nots, the same old/same old suffering people of this world, widows and whole nations.
Let us go in peace then, to be people of goodness and service and sacrifice. I keep trying to do better, like most people do, but I don’t have a magic wand. I am learning as I go; and boy, am I humbled by my failings. And “humbled” is always a great place to start anything, from being a better parent, writer, mate; or still, after all these years, trying to save the world.
7. From Pema Chödrön, (who I also adore):
Abandon All Hope and Fear: Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.
In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”
8. He still doesn’t have a name, but boy oh boy is he cute,(by Allison Mae Photography–do yourself a favor and go to her site and see the rest of her pictures for a whopping dose of the super cutes).
9. “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ~Maya Angelou
21. Girl Rising Montage, a documentary with a powerful message–Want to see change? Educate a girl.
21. This explains so much for me, “Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” ~Shakti Gawain
25. This quote, shared in this post by Hannah Marcotti, “And if you feel free, you feel empowered. And every negative emotion that exists—hear this—every negative emotion that exists is because there is some sense of loss of freedom somewhere in there.” ~Abraham
In the end, I decided that doing art during a recession is about the same as doing art during any other time. You have to believe in it, be open to it, trust it, do it. You have to embrace it as blindly and fervently as a spinning Sufi if you want to get anything out of it.
But the truth is, there’s a reason most well-known writers still teach English. There’s a reason most authors drive dented cars. There’s a reason most writers have bad teeth. It’s not because we’ve chosen a life of poverty. It’s that poverty has chosen our profession… Even when there’s money in writing, there’s not much money.
28. Susan Orlean on Writing, on Brain Pickings, (in case you are a writer, and that doesn’t change no matter how depressing those past two articles were), in which she advises writers that,
You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
You should read as much as possible. That’s the best way to learn how to write.
You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and you should have a good agent and you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world.
Don’t be ashamed to use the thesaurus. I could spend all day reading Roget’s! There’s nothing better when you’re in a hurry and you need the right word right now.
If you are waiting to be thin or thinner, to be happy, happiness will elude you no matter what you weigh. If you are waiting to really begin your life until you have success or a relationship or the perfect place to live, you won’t get that sought after joy.
What we want most, what we think we can only have if we meet certain conditions, is to inhabit our lives. To love our sweet lives. And if you believe you need to get “there” to enjoy “here”, the problem is that when you get there, “there” looks very much like “here.” Because wherever you are, you are always here, where you are.
The challenge is to pay attention here. To be alive here. To learn how to wake yourself up here. It’s a habit, this learning to be awake and alive because we are so used to distracting ourselves and deadening ourselves. And we carry this old belief that it’s impossible to do it any other way. But that’s not true. Anyone can learn this. There is so much goodness here, right here, in the middle of our messy imperfect lives, right in this very second, that it turns out that here is, after all, as good as there. (Which is not to say that your body wouldn’t be more comfortable at a different weight or that you wouldn’t feel a sense of satisfaction in success).
When we pay attention, there is nothing missing. It’s all here. And you don’t have to wait to get it, you don’t have to achieve anything to be in it. Will you allow yourself to have the messy imperfect life you have? Will you stop, even if it’s just for today, waiting for your life to begin and realize that it’s already begun?
34. Andrea Gibson: “Letter To A Playground Bully from Andrea (age 8).”
35. Exit 245 – Titanium (David Guetta feat. Sia) [Official Music Video]. I’m a total sucker for glee club music.
What do you mean it will never happen? How can you say you don’t deserve it? Why would you ever think such things? Let me clear things up, my darling. It will happen. You do deserve it. I was just making sure you really wanted it. Do you?
The trouble with making space is that it might mean you do have to go somewhere unpleasant. You might realise that you really don’t like your job, or that you feel lonely. You might have to admit that you haven’t a clue about what you’re doing. This is the most common reason for keeping our lives nicely filled up. We don’t want to risk falling down into the gap.
40. Desire: A Story, a beautiful post from Sunni on The Daily Breadcrumb.
It seems fitting tonight to offer a nod to St. Patrick’s Day with a quote from my friend John O’Donohue: “Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey,” from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
42. This quote from Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, “At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.”
43. The Still Point of the Turning World, a beautiful reflection on a heartbreaking but beautiful book on A Design So Vast. I really want to read this book, even though I know it will wreck me. Lindsey shares a quote in her post from the book,
This is precisely why grief, like love and any other foundational, deceptively simple human emotion or state of being, is the terrain of artists. And it is a writer’s even more specific job to give voice to loss in whatever ways she can, to give shape to this unspeakable, impermeable reality beneath all other realities.
44. How to do less and live more, from Kris Carr, in which she says, “lately I’ve been wondering if we’re busier than we really need to be.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 