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Learning to Be Gentle
I have felt so aggravated and unsettled lately, and it’s caused me to be a bit stern with myself. Why do you feel this way, Heather? Why are you making problems where none exists? Why can’t you just be happy? But this narrative is not helpful, and its time for a change. We are having trees taken down in our meadow, an adjacent property we bought early last year with the intention of folding it into our farm business. We call it the meadow because it’s the most wide open space where we live; we’re covered in trees otherwise. But the meadow is the perfect place for a huge garden. It’s already open and the pine trees that are being cut will make it an even more open space to let the sunshine in. The problem? It’s unsettled me (and has sorta pissed me…
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Dancing with the Divine
A few days ago the picture of me below popped up on my Facebook memories. It was from eleven years ago. I look good in it; happy. And it got me thinking. Eleven years isn’t that long ago, and at the same time, it feels like a lifetime ago. I was in my early forties and my daughter was only eleven—exactly half the age she is now. I don’t look back very often. I can’t read old journals; it depresses me. I don’t like thinking about how things were. I’m much more of a forward moving person. I think about how things used to be, and I thank God for the way things are now. Thinking about today and tomorrow always feels better in my body than thinking about what was. I find this interesting. But … I do see the value in looking…
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The Truth of Myself
I overshared today. At least it feels like I overshared. And yet it also felt essential. It’s been a hard week. I’m feeling lots of feels, the world’s weight and my past pressing in on me. “Must I be so dramatic?,” I think to myself. “Why can’t things be light and easy?” They are sometimes. Sometimes often. Sometimes not. Sometimes it’s all too much. And when I get this way, all I can do is express (through writing), which is exactly what I did this morning. I’ve been back and forth with one of the teachers of my spiritual direction training program. I’ve been on the verge of leaving the program a few times now and we’re conversing about some work-arounds that might help me. After presenting me with options last night, I sat with them. And myself. I questioned my ability to keep…
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Voicing the Struggle
I’ve been struggling the last few days. Part of the requirement of my spiritual direction certification is to meet in peer group a few times per month. The purpose of these small group calls is to present situations we are struggling with during our practicum period. The calls consist of five to seven people with one person presenting each month while the others provide noticings, questions, images and impressions. It’s a beautiful and meaningful process but I’m struggling with it. I’ve been struggling since the program started last November. And I’ve been open and honest about these struggles with my teachers. Earlier this week it came to a peak. After getting off of the call on Monday, I was in distress — debilitating distress. It was affecting my energy and psyche to such a degree that I considered dropping out of the program. ‘Old…
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Energetic Boundaries
I honestly didn’t even know there was such a thing as energetic boundaries until I recognized the need for them in my body. This training program in which I’m currently enrolled is pushing me in ways I’ve never been pushed before, or I’m a lot more in tune and have the ability to notice more easily. Essentially the feeling is that of all (or most) of my energy leaving me and entering into the other, typically during conversation. As the other person speaks, I’m drawn into their words, feelings and situation. Sometimes it causes me angst; other times higher emotions, but always I am IN the experience — no separation between them and me. I’m in the process of catching and working with it in the moment, a task that has been difficult in the past. In fact, there are lots of parts of…
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Overcoming Accidie
Last week, I wrote about accidie. Today I’d like to offer a few resources I found for overcoming working through it. We can’t let boredom and frustration separate us from what must be done. Our task is to be faithful to the demands of daily life with an honest, open heart. (1) “Being faithful in our regular times of prayer, study, office tasks, cleaning the house, changing diapers, and other works that we may be called to do each day can seem dry and discouraging. Yet it is precisely in these quotidian tasks of life that a remedy for acedia is found. The discipline of reforming our outer activity can be a means, with God’s grace, to inner transformation.” (2) To me, this sounds a lot like a call to be in the present moment, with fervor, grace and humility. And it’s not easy in our…
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What It Feels Like
Today I thought I’d try to put words to what a dis-regulated nervous system feels like — or perhaps what it feels like to discover and regulate it. I didn’t know I had a dis-regulated nervous system until a few years ago. And I only began to understand it in the context of holistic health. I had inklings prior to this time, but didn’t have a way to access the deeper parts of myself that were keeping it stuck. Last year, I met with someone who would become a new friend, Tonya, a Vital Herbalist. She did an Astrological Ayurvedic Reading to help me uncover the root of my high blood pressure. Prior to our meeting, I suspicioned that anxiety was/is the cause of my hypertension and I was right; I just didn’t understand the full extent of it at the time. Tonya prepared…
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Accidie
I first encountered the word acedia (accidie in English) a few years ago. The definition: spiritual sloth, apathy, indifference. It gave me pause. I recognized it in myself. To me, it’s a feeling of ‘not quite right.’ Yet nothing is actually wrong either; no major catastrophe, no problem to solve, no daily issue. Just not quite right. I find the feeling a bit suffocating. And yet I know that by pushing it away, it will likely stay longer. ‘What we resist, persists,’ ya know? Here’s a little story from Richard Rohr, the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Daily Meditations: The wisdom of the desert tempers our instinct to avoid boredom and discomfort: Amma Syncletica’s (one of the desert mothers) bird metaphor speaks directly to one of the dilemmas of the spiritual life—that of coming to terms with the plain old ordinariness of spiritual practice…
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It All Has Meaning, But It Doesn’t Have to be Hard
This came to me as a mantra the other day in my discernment process. Anxiety, angst, ‘shoulding myself to death’ and frustration are clues on the spiritual journey, information to assess. And mostly it’s showing me what isn’t helpful instead of what is. While I’ve practiced embodiment for several years now, deeper layers continue to reveal themselves. Practices are how we live into who and how we want to be in the world. And what I see now is that there are many forces that wish to keep us stuck, forces that want us to be ill, disconnected … from each other, ourselves and the natural world. Healing, for me, begins with embodiment, nature, and dismantling the thought patterns that brought me here in the first place. And this paragraph from my training has been echoing in my head for the last few weeks:…
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Just Keep Swimming
Lately I’ve been thinking about all of the pivots I’ve made in my life, and the ways society (capitalism, the patriarchy) doesn’t like that. Society prefers the status quo, coloring in the lines, doing what we’ve always done. Society wants to keep us stuck. And perhaps that’s the reason for all of the pivots. I’ve seen through the lies of it for a very long time. But here’s the thing about going against the grain: it’s not easy. A lot of people won’t understand. And it can bring up a lot of fear, mental madness, questions … Am I weird? Am I alone? Am I the only one who sees the BS happening here? Contemplative practice calls us deeper into ourselves, and ultimately deeper into God. While not everything has meaning, it is our job to pay attention, and to keep going to that…