stop. breathe. listen.

what has happened?
where did my spaciousness go?
waxing. waning.
full moon gone behind a cloud of busyness.
stop, my child. breathe.*

Early last week felt so spacious, so inviting, so wonderful. I was moving my body and feeling whole and inspired. This week I feel rushed and crushed. It is eight days until Paris and it feels like it is coming too fast. I will have only eight days there. I want these days to slow down. I want to linger here as I desire to do there.

I spent the past weekend (Friday through Sunday) collaboratively creating a couples workshop for Soltura called “The Paradoxical Dance.” The project is energizing and exhausting all at the same time. We will join together again this weekend to fine tune what we have created so far. Thursday I have collage class and then I will ride the ferry across the Sound to visit friends. I will see students on Monday and Tuesday of next week and then very early Friday morning I will leave for Paris.

It feels too fast. I need to catch my breath. I wanted to go to yoga this morning, but sleep seemed more important. I have a to do list a mile long, but writing and processing a bit feels more essential. My visual journal is calling me as well as magazine clippings that say “create me into something.”

Create me into something. Is that my prayer today? I do not want these days to pass so quickly--only filled with busyness. My longing is to be intentional. To stop and listen to God. To see where my path is leading. To follow the rhythms of my soul. It is my own paradox. When I take time for myself, I seem to have abundant time in other places. When I give to others, I receive blessings in return that I cannot count.

Ahh...I cannot put words to it just yet, but it is my Lenten practice. The spaciousness is returning as I slow down, breathe and listen. Amen.

Where do you need to slow down? Breathe? Listen? What are the paradoxes in your life?

* see posts here and here. they helped me start to put into words how i was feeling this morning.

Vessels

Vessels. Mother as vessel. Woman as vessel. Broken. Cracked. Whole. Sacred vessel. Holy vessel. Pregnant with hope and life.

A vessel for the season of Lent. If the vessel is closed, I cannot be fed. If it is poured to overfilling, it may crack. Today my vessel feels empty. No, it has been emptied for Lent with wonder and expectation, but the filling of Ash Wednesday was painful and venomous. I would rather be empty than filled with this poison. I do not enjoy this process of filling and emptying. Especially when my choice feels limited. When a fire hydrant opens and pours into your tiny jar, how can it not be tossed around, cracked or broken?

The choice becomes how to be in the brokenness. How to become a vessel that is open to let in the feelings that need to be felt, but to narrow the opening and not let poison fill me to the top. How do I learn to receive the pain that is mine to receive and not carry the guilt for that which I have no control over?

This season of lent feels so much about tending to my vessel. Being gentle with the cracks while not ignoring them. Mending the breaks that I can. Seeing myself as whole. A sacred vessel. Pregnant with hope and life…some days a little more than others ☺.

How are you called to tend the cracks of life? Have you ever considered yourself as vessel? What will help you stay open to God rather than closing off and obstructing your own pathway?

collage by lucy

Imbolc

Imbolc. For three mornings now this word has been drifting in and out of my mind. (Probably starting with this post.) Imbolc is translated as “in the belly” and that seems to be exactly where the stirring sits. Inside. Embodied. Changing. Shifting.

Last week Sunrise Sister asked, “Has an old person moved into your body?” Some days it feels like one has as my knees creak and my body stiffens. But there is a very young person inside saying, “Make room for me. I have much to do and life to live!”

For many years I had a great discipline of walking several miles most days of the week as well as exercising on a regular basis. Somewhere along the way those disciplines drifted away. While still active, I realize that I now spend more time sitting, writing, and reading. I have not been sleeping as well at night and my head often pounds in the morning when I awaken. Again, I here the voice that says, “Take care of yourself. There is too much to do…to create…to see…to live!”

And so in this way of listening, I happened upon my Lenten practice for the year. It will be a time to take care of my body. Not in a “boot camp” sort of way, but gently and intentionally. Today is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, which announces the beginning of Lent. Lent traditionally means a time of fasting which can in itself ring of deprivation and another start to already failed New Year’s resolutions. That is not what I am feeling for this season. Again, it is gentler, kinder and more being mindful of how I am treating my body. What I am putting in it. How I will keep it moving. Where I will find rest. It honestly reminds me of being pregnant. Thinking of a seed sprouting from inside. New birth. Growth. Taking care of my body as if it were pregnant, because (figuratively speaking) it is!

Germinating new moments & creations. Moving toward life. What is stirring in your belly as we enter this season of Lent?

Easter Musings

Why must we be so quick to judge others, particularly those who we believe to be different from us, or who see things in other ways? Why must we be so quick to decide we are right and someone else is wrong? Why is religion used to divide the world rather than unite it in love?

This seems to be Evil's most cunning trick—to take religion, our pathway to God, and use it to create dissonance and war. If the way of love is Jesus’ way and Muhammad’s and Moses’ and Gandhi’s, then evil gets the last laugh because the world has fallen into the trap of using faith, beliefs, Bibles, Qurans and Torahs as bludgeons against one another.

I hesitated going to church yesterday because I did not want to hear the voice of judgment saying, the Resurrection is the ONLY way to believe, thereby making “us” right and the rest of the world wrong. Ironically, the choice to go to church was taken out of my hands. My daughter and I were ready to go meet my husband who was already there. I went to pick up my keys and after a frantic search discovered that my sweet husband had mistakenly taken both sets of keys with him. Aargh!! (As Lucy is prone to say.) So I settled down to have a quiet reading time instead. Shortly, thereafter, a knock came at the door. It was a beautiful “angel” named Sabrina bringing my keys to me. So, once again my daughter and I headed out the door. We got in the car, turned the key, and nothing except a click click…Double AARGH!! Then we looked at each other and burst into laughter. We agreed that maybe we weren’t meant to make it to “church” this Easter.

Back in the house, I listened to my favorite Easter hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” For me, it has always defined Easter and I felt no differently yesterday for I love to imagine Christ walking out of the tomb and overcoming death. Next I listened to several versions of “Amazing Grace.” Finally I opened my Bible to look for the Easter story and was stopped by these words:

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35

There it was “love for one another.” I began to cry as I felt the peace and comfort of God. This for me is the key. Not judgments. Not being right or wrong. Not war and condemnation. But, LOVE. God had spoken to me more loudly and clearly in the silence of my own living room than any sermon from a pulpit on this Easter day.

Amazing Grace.

Good Friday

Can't you almost see the cross on the hill? I have never really understood why the day about Christ's death has been called "good." And, I know that today as I have reflected on my life, I can only call it Good. Beautiful. Abundant.

While it has not been a day of silence, it has been a day I have spent with myself. I spent the morning communing with my home. It was very comforting to spend time cleaning, unpacking, doing laundry and welcoming Spring. It is a glorious day in Seattle. Blue skies, a slight breeze and temperatures in the low 70's. It is a spring delight. As I write, I sit on my back deck with my old yellow dog, Curry, at my feet. I have spoken with a few friends today. They have blessed me and I have blessed them. I have shared e-mails and received amazing words of kindness about my gifts. Buechner's words on vocation come to mind. "The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." I am blessed to have been called to that place of deep gladness.

And what has this to do with Good Friday? For me, it symbolizes life and the intricate role death plays in our living. Abundant Life. Life includes my friends and family as well as the man on the bus and the Native American woman I encountered on my walk today. Her toothless smile brightened my day as we looked each other squarely in the eye and greeted one another. I wept as I read Naomi Shihab Nye's poem at Chrisine's site about the beauty of community and breaking bread. Again, Good Friday points toward life. Welcoming the world, person by person, with simple gestures of love and care; being grateful for old dogs and clean sheets. These make life "good." Thank you, Lord, for today's reminder of life, death and resurrection.

"This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost." --Naomi Shihab Nye