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The HSP Dilemma
I went to dinner last night with a group of girls, four who are close friends and three I didn’t know well. I knew before I went that it would be a challenge for me because of my HSP (highly sensitive person) tendencies, but I wanted to go. I wanted to spend time with beautiful friends celebrating the holiday season. Upon arrival, I met two of the women unknown to me and we sat at the bar waiting for the others. I engaged in casual conversation with one of the women I didn’t know; she was lovely, but … But here’s the thing … as the evening went on, I grew more and more tired and angst began to fill me. The energy of the room became palpable. My surroundings grew louder. I began to feel my uncomfortability intensely in my body. I scrutinized…
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Life’s Longing for Itself
“Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth…..” Khalil Gibran
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Wisdom is Fostered by Awe
All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it…. Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. Faith…
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Wonder, Awe, Amazement!
For the last several years, I’ve chosen a word for myself during a journaling exercise completed close to the end of each calendar year. For 2023, my word was ALIVENESS, and this word showed up for me in a big way. In fact, it showed up in an extreme way I’d never want to invite again … being profoundly sick for a full two months this summer — the biggest lack of aliveness I’ve ever felt in this lifetime. I chose the word because I wanted to feel fully alive, present, completely IN my life. I didn’t (and don’t) want to miss the magic. Interestingly, the Center for Action & Contemplation’s theme this week is AMAZEMENT, which might have been a better word to choose given the trajectory that followed the choosing of aliveness. From today’s meditation, Rohr writes this: “When the veil is…
