Quote | To Bless What Is

"To bless whatever there is, and for no other reason but simply because it is—that is our raison d’etre; that is what we are made for as human beings. This singular command is engraved in our heart. Whether we understand this or not matters little. Whether we agree or disagree makes no difference. And in our heart of hearts we know it."

Br. David Steindl-Rast

Quote | Where we are

"God comes to us not where we should have been if we had made all the right choices in life; not where we could have been if we had taken every opportunity that God has offered us; not where we wish we were if we didn’t have to be in the place where we find ourselves; not where we think we arebecause our minds are out of sync with our hearts; not where other peoplethink we are or think we ought to be when they are attending to their own agendas. God meets us where we really are."
Margaret Silf

Quote | Embrace it all

"I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it. Some may say that this embrace is narcissistic, an obsession with self at the expense of others, but that is not how I experience it. When I ignored my own truth on behalf of a distorted ego and ethic, I led a false life that caused others pain—for which I can only ask forgiveness. When I started attending to my own truth, more of that truth became available in my work and my relationships. I now know that anything one can do on behalf of true self is done ultimately in the service of others."
-Parker Palmer

Quote | Ina Garten

Wonderful encouragement from Ina Garten (aka: The Barefoot Contessa) in this article by Forbes. 

“Do what you love. If it’s fun, you’ll be really good at it. And don’t worry so much.”

YES, I'll go ahead and do that Ina. Thank you! 

Quote | Response to a Call

Contemplation is the response to a call: a call from [the one] who has no voice, and yet who speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of his…. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One.

Thomas Merton

Being a healthy Seven

Today, build on your strength as a Seven. Healthy Sevens are not satisfied with merely being a consumer. They know that their primary enjoyment of life comes from contributing something to the world. 

The Wisdom of the Enneagram, 283

Quote | Find It Here

Joy and peace are the joy and peace possible in this very hour of sitting. If you cannot find it here, you won’t find it anywhere. Don’t chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Don’t run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment. This is your own time. This spot where you sit is your own spot. It is on this very spot and in this very moment that you can become enlightened. You don’t have to sit beneath a special tree in a distant land. Practice like this for a few months, and you will begin to know a profound and renewing delight.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Quote | Enneagram 7 Kick In The Face.

Today's Enneathought kicked me in the head.

"Growth does not come from fulfilling all your wishes or your immediate impulses. Growth comes from allowing your ego's story to drop away."

Thank you. 

quote | be patient toward all

I want to beg you as much as you can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it—but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your innermost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

quote | change

Change of one sort or another is the essence of life, so there will always be the loneliness and insecurity that come with change. When we refuse to accept that loneliness and insecurity are part of life, when we refuse to accept that they are the price of change, we close the door on many possibilities for ourselves; our lives become lessened…. Life evolves; change is constant.

Jean Vanier

quote | ambition

When I was young, I longed to be a saint. What was I longing for? I think it was for certainty that my life had been, in the most profound sense, a ‘success’—that great and glorious success that is sanctity. We revere the saints, we imitate them, theirs is the true and lasting glory. Very clearly, this desire is, unconsciously, as worldly as that of the writer who wants to write a masterpiece or the politician who yearns to be prime minister or president. None of these ambitions has the least to do with what Jesus preached—that lowliness, that love for last place, that readiness to die and be forgotten…. To be concerned with oneself in any way, to watch one’s growth in ‘holiness’ or ‘prayer’, to be spiritually ambitious, all this Jesus earnestly sets his face against.

Sr. Wendy Beckett

quote | if we really want to...

"Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Each one of us can live such a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity, on one condition—that is, if we really want to. There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world."

Thomas Kelly

quote | the silence

Four a.m. – The Silence is so intense that the striking of a distant clock comes into it like sounds from another world. How bright the stars are! How still the trees! Neither branches nor leaves are in motion. Everything seems to be waiting for something to happen. It is a time when the veil between the worlds is thin. There seems neither space nor time between the unseen and the seen. I am aware, as never during the day, of the threshold leading from life to greater life, for all creation as for me.
Elizabeth Yates

quote | the greatest gift of you

Whatever you do with your life—whatever you end up achieving or not achieving—the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody else’s. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill.

Frederick Buechner

quote | taking risks

To live is to take risks. It is absolutely central. Courage and risk are essential to aliveness. And aliveness is the thing that we all strive for and long for, yet sometimes barricade ourselves against out of fear … even as we are still longing for it. If we are not taking risks, it is for the same reason that people do take risks, namely, we want to be alive. We all want the same thing. I’m reminded of an elderly man who lives in a house with a steep wheelchair ramp leading down to the street. There is always a lot of traffic on his street and every morning my friend sees him going full speed down the ramp in his wheelchair. One day she asked him, “Isn’t this dangerous?” And he said with sparks in his eyes, laughing, “Yesss, it is!”

Br. David Steindl-Rast 

resisting much needed fallowness.

the garage heater is humming downstairs, working desperately hard to heat up the cold garage. (we are trying to dry out the carpet that got wet from the melted snow dragged in by buddy's giant tires.) otherwise, it's completely silent from where i sit. i'm upstairs in our new temporary home, on the L-shaped deep purple couch, my legs crossed and extended. the windows overlook the madison valley, and the peaks of the mountains are still hidden by the cold cloud cover from morning. it's half past 3pm already, and i'm still in my pajamas, blanket wrapped around my shoulders. i've only been up for five hours since i stayed up past 1am to watch the season premiere of downton abbey. ; ) 

since january 3rd, i haven't known what time it's been when my eyes first open. i just wake up when i wake up these days. sometimes the bright sun light will beckon me to rise. sometimes (like today), it's dark and cloudy and sleeping until 10:30am doesn't bother me like it used to when i'd "sleep in" until 9am. 

my husband went into town to run a few errands: make copies of keys (which we hardly use), go to the local meat shop, sign up for a gym, and return library dvd's and donate a book i finally finished (ender's shadow, in the slim chance you were wondering). mostly though, i think he was excited to just roam around our new one block town and have some alone time. me too (about the alone time). i've been wanting to be quiet and think...

why am i painting this scene?

well, because i'm reflecting on fallowness today while simultaneously sitting in a large L-shaped couch of discomfort. the discomfort that comes with not feeling like i'm being a productive member of society.

this morning's quote from inward/outward triggered the externalization of my deeper internal jumble:

There is a fallow time for the spirit when the soil is barren…. Face it! Then resolutely dig out dead roots, clear the ground, … work out new designs by dreaming daring dreams and great and creative planning. The time is not wasted. The time of fallowness is a time of rest and restoration, of filling up and replenishing. It is the moment when the meaning of all things can be searched out, tracked down, and made to yield the secret of living. Thank God for the fallow time! 

Howard Thurman

2014 is a sabbatical year for me and my husband. we've moved to ennis to S-L--O---W D---O--W-N and let the dirt settle in our lives, our minds, and most importantly, our hearts. and as much as i know and believe that this is the best decision for us right now, i keep wanting to kick the dirt around; to unsettle the soul because some part of me can't seem to stand still. i need to keep doingdoingdoing and searching for external achievements. it make sense: i have an ego (ha!) and i've been flowing down a fast river for some time now. it's not easy to just bring that much energy to an abrupt halt and to accept myself just as i am, not for what i accomplish.

but i feel the mountains that surround me are calling out to me to settle down, to calm my mind, and to accept (and love) just being. i came here to create a huge wide open space to allow what needs to emerge, emerge. and i predict that the mountains are what will call out "great and creative planning" and "daring dreams" for this life ahead. but first, i need to stop playing with the dirt and let my fallow time be fallow.

it's now a quarter past 4pm. the mountain peaks have finally emerged. i too shall wait (hopefully patiently) for the clouds to clear...

30 going on 13.

in 13 days, i'll be wed. 
omygod. 

30 year old me, is getting married. the day i thought would've happened four years ago, has finally arrived. (let me just say that i am so grateful that reality doesn't follow the plans i mapped out during my immature 18th year of life. bo--ring!)

you might assume that i'd be really excited b/c the sun's shining, birds are chirping, and life is just dandy! i'm getting married, wheeeeee! right?

today, i barely woke up at 9:30 and mostly just felt bad. why? i couldn't figure it out for the first two hours of the morning when i laid in bed and finally murdered level 29 of candy crush. (it's taken probably over 40 tries to pass that level w/o any aid!)

but it started hitting me while i was on the phone with my oldest sister. i am really sad. as excited as i am to commit my life to my beloved, each day leads me closer to saying goodbye and closing this chapter of my single life. it's been an amazing 30 years of being my free bird self. but i think what's been striking me most is saying goodbye to viewing my family of origin as #1. they have been my family. they have been my priority. but with marriage, it's creating a new family. one where i choose my husband to be #1.

i know that getting married doesn't mean i am abandoning my family of origin or vice versa, but there is a real internal shift that's happening. i feel it. it seems good and natural for this to happen, but inherent in this shift is grief. 

amidst all this, this quote is really speaking to me today. it's comforting.

"deep commitment brings deep healing, and deep healing brings deep generosity. commitment allows us to take the lids off the jars that are our lives, and helps us to embrace drastic changes." 
-marjory bankson

i hope to get to a place of deep generosity, over and over. 

quote | a wisp of love

To see ourselves as we truly are—a wisp of love itself—is perhaps our deepest fear. But it is also our greatest grace. If we are to be the new human, we must begin by embracing love, which always seeks to incarnate itself. Love is enfleshed everywhere. Everywhere the Holy One is shouting and whispering, ‘Let me love you.’ And all that is asked of us is to receive. In reality, that is our life’s work. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
Judy Cannato

quote | true giving

You give but little when you give
of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself
that you truly give.
For what are your possessions
but things you keep and guard
for fear you may need them tomorrow?
Kahlil Gibran

quote | love your neighbor

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self–to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Barbara Brown Taylor