Though you cannot
remember it now,
you have taken a vow
with the stars
as your witness,
to offer your heart
to this world.
You have agreed
to remain naked, raw,
and vulnerable forever,
to enter into
the heart of sadness
and the ocean of tenderness
if that is where love calls you.
Your only guide
is the unknown
and the only map
is found inside
the cells of your own heart.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
14. Wisdom from Anaïs Nin, “The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
Come to the edge. We can’t. We’re afraid.
Come to the edge. We can’t. We will fall!
Come to the edge. And they came.
And he pushed them. And they flew.
26. Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out on The Guardian, which says, “This is the dreadful mistake we are making: allowing ourselves to believe that having more money and more stuff enhances our wellbeing.”
5. 27 Days: Writing Prompts to Grow Your Powers, for FREE! Here’s an excellent gift you can give YOURSELF for the holidays, 27 Days: Writing Prompts to Grow Your Powers, Laurie Wagner’s 27 Day writing prompt program delivered daily to your inbox. It’s a simple way to keep your writing practice alive during the holidays, and an excellent opportunity to start a practice if you don’t have one. You’re welcome.
6. Architect Bypasses Mortgage Payments, Builds a Tiny Home on My Modern Met. My obsession with tiny houses is not that I want to live in one, (my house is only a little over 1000 square feet, so I’m in a pretty small space already), but that I want something like this in my backyard, to use as a studio, class, guest space.
When we’re speeding along, we violate our own natural rhythms in a way that prevents us from listening to our inner life and being in a resonant field with others. We get tight. We get small. We override our capacity to appreciate beauty, to celebrate, to serve from the heart.
Fear contains powerful messages. When we’re courageous enough to be with what scares us, we can awaken our intuition and create a new path for healing. Whether you’re worried about getting sick, you’re currently dealing with a health issue, or you’re scared and struggling in other areas of your life, don’t judge your fears, invite them to tea.
It’s common to belittle our fears and try to pre-maturely cleanse them away. But just because we’re afraid, doesn’t mean we’re toxic or failing or falling off the spiritual wagon. Fear is one of the many colors in our emotional palette, and it’s often there for a reason. There’s nothing weak or less evolved about being frightened. And guess what, you’re not alone. We’re all scared. No one is fearless.
31. Wisdom from Rumi,
Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.
“How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?” asks Stanley Kunitz in a poem.
and
Thomas Merton, the great Benedictine monk, captured this paradox succinctly. “Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and heart has turned to stone,” he wrote.
So whatever you believe about homosexuality, keep it to yourself. Instead, try telling a gay kid that you love him and you don’t want him to die. Try inviting her into your church and into your home and into your life. Anything other than that simply doesn’t matter.
1. Love Is… (Holy Shit, I Have Cancer) on Huffington Post by Elana Miller. The post she wrote just before this one is worth a read too, Our World is Rule by Love.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 