9. Day 10: Joy Coughs Up The Truth
I have heard joy is an inside job which is true and reasonable yet still is a bit challenging to find/see/be aware of joy when circumstances say otherwise (pain, sadness, cold, coughing fit). It is not so much that I am not joyful it is just that the pain/cough etc is so loud I don’t hear joy. Since I am really noticing my awareness (or lack thereof) of joy this month I quickly notice if I am not feeling joy. Yesterday we went for a glorious walk on the moor to a place called Boot’s Folly, a four story stone structure built in the middle of a wide paddock filled with sheep....
Read More8. Day 19: Silence & Simplicity
I love that I keep getting plenty of opportunity to extend love to Not-Knowing…….by not knowing how our holidays (or the afternoon) will unfold. It seems both completely unreal and completely natural that we are here, in London, living in a little cottage near Notting Hill Gate station. We buy groceries at Tesco, go to Boots for a new flat iron (I decided when mine burnt the handkerchief I was holding it with because it was so hot, it was time to go native) and we walk everywhere. Yet there are many times we feel displaced and unsure what we are doing here exactly. It is a...
Read More8. Day 7: A Deep Clear Inbreath of God
I am trying not to see my earache as a metaphor of my unwillingness not to hear the truth re Not-Knowing, but it is almost impossible not to. What is new for me is to “stay with” my earache in tenderness, welcome and care rather than “What the heck can I do to get rid of this??!!” I will bet that my earache will last as long as it lasts regardless and I have before me the continual choice to delight in this or suffer in this. Honestly (and when I say that I mean it deeply having spent a month co-habitating with honesty without a license) I would really rather...
Read More8. Day 6: Where Peace & Calm Are Lounging
Yesterday was one of those days that you wonder how on earth you got there in the first place and how will you make it to the end of the day in a state of anything coming close to wholeness. We are flying to London in a week for an extended time of work, sabbatical and wonder. But first there is an important conference to attend in Los Angeles. What fertile ground for the practice of not-knowing. I faced yesterday in such a state of not-knowing (spilled over from the previous day of not-knowing) that I almost had to laugh as I looked at the day’s list which included changing dinner...
Read More7. Day 13: Turning Fear Into Honey Spoons
It’s Monday. Speaking of pain….. why do we think pain in the only way to learn? Why the phrase “No pain/No gain”? Why did my grandmother say when brushing my hair and I winced, “You have to suffer to be beautiful!”? It is because we truly believe we must go through pain in order to feel, connect with and experience God. I do not believe this is something God requires. God can absolutely turn suffering into revelation and fear into honey spoons but do we really believe God desires us to suffer in order to be free? I have noticed how deeply rooted this...
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