• being human,  embodied liturgies,  embodiment,  learning,  musings,  writing

    Embodying the God Within

    I reflect often about life … why I do certain things, why I am drawn to particular actions and repelled by others, and I’ve realized through the years that when I over-question, it stops the flow. Sure, it helps to get at meaning, but excess is just that. In all things. I wonder if our world of excess plays into these tendencies within us … like increases like. These noticings have helped me to lean into embodiment when it happens … letting things be, posturing my body toward ‘just being’ instead of overthinking. And this leads to the journey that God has been taking me on all along … Throwing myself into the practice of yoga at a vulnerable time in my twenties, becoming a yoga teacher in my thirties, pivoting out of a set trajectory involving yoga in my late forties, finding contemplative…

  • being human,  embodied liturgies,  embodiment,  learning,  musings,  writing

    Keeping Our Eyes on God

    I have tried to read the Bible on so many occasions I’ve lost count. I even listened to the Bible In A Year podcast for most of the year a few years back; it was a helpful resource, doing it that way, but it didn’t stick. Simply ‘sitting down to read the scripture’ is a tough task. Strategy helps. A few years ago, I learned of several methods for studying the Bible as well as a meditative tool called Lectio Divina. I am more drawn to the latter, as I find God speaking to me in silent reflective contemplation, but studying scripture is also helpful when we put it in the context of the life we’re living today. During my time in the Living School, we read many spiritual texts, including very old ones … not as ancient as the writings in the Bible…

  • being human,  breath,  embodied liturgies,  embodiment,  learning,  musings

    This Thanksgiving

    This Thanksgiving, I’m reflecting on gratitude, as I’m prone to do. In fact, gratitude is at the forefront of my little brain a lot of the time. During my two-month deep illness and spiritual crisis this summer, my gratitude practice was one of the primary things that saved me … when you’re really sick, it’s easy to downward spiral. Instead of allowing myself to do that, I reflected on all the things I was grateful for, while being stuck in a place I really didn’t want to be. It takes conscious effort but is soooo worth it. Gratitude, to me, is directly from God; numerous bible verses have contributed to this belief … ‘give thanks in all circumstances …,’ ‘giving thanks always and for everything to God …,’ ‘overflowing in many expressions of thanks …,’ ‘thank God for this gift too wonderful for words…

  • being human,  embodied liturgies,  embodiment,  learning,  musings,  writing

    All God

    God is not a concept, idea, law, ideology or deity in the clouds, distant from us. God is beyond what you can think, has human qualities but is not human, is always happening, always now, is always with us — nearer to us than we are to ourselves. God is love personified, and yet God cannot be explained. God is. (Yes, that’s a full sentence.) God IS. But the problem is that we can’t wrap our heads around that. Creation wasn’t a one time event. It is always happening, because God is always happening. This is hard for us to grasp too, because we live in a culture of deadlines, goals and finishing. Who of us doesn’t imagine ourselves ‘arriving’ somewhere in the future … the perfect job, car, partner, house, vacation, the ‘perfect life?’ We’re wired to constantly work toward an end, and…