#Reverb 14, Day 14

1. The idea of rooting down into your own personal beliefs and center of truth is an ongoing process, and many things can serve as anchors or roots as you move through life.

What rooted or anchored you in 2014?

And where do you want to put down roots in 2015?

2. One word: What one word could describe your 2014?

1. Moving through all the fear and anxiety and change that I did this year both around my heart issues and also around my daughter's issues required from me the faith that things could be better than they were. 

And so I took one step at a time and let go of some things -- like the financial involvement in my daughter's life and desire to steer her life in the direction I thought it should go, for instance. I'd started that process more than a year ago then, but really took definite steps to get myself out of it -- and in the process this year, I've lost any interest in playing detective and finding out details that she often omits in conversation. Her path is hers to live and to manage, and not mine, and I will not be easily drawn into any future drama. 

That all required faith from me that she indeed could do this, that I could indeed let go. 

The whole heart health problems demanded faith that it could improve and that I would be okay through it all. One step at a time. One procedure, one call, one visit, one test at a time. And it has gotten both easier and better.

So for 2015, I want to keep faith, but I want to add strength: in body and mind and spirit. Practice the techniques I learned this year, rebuild body strength, and continue to grow in spiritual paths.

2. Duh. 

Faith. 

April Moon 14: Day 4 -- Sacred

Sacred

What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?

Sacred has the definition of 'revered due to association with holiness. Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy (perceived by religious individuals as associated with divinity) or sacred (considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspiring awe or reverence among believers).'

For me, I'm not so much influenced by the opinions or practices of'religious individuals as associated with divinity.' That's probably because once upon a time in another life I worked for the Great Church. I saw 'em up close and personal, warts and all, politics and abuses of office and so on. I loved and honored many who I knew. Our clergy are PEOPLE, folks, and they have faults and idiosyncracies and they make mistakes. Many have a genuine calling to serve; I'd venture to say most of them began with that, but there are some who lost that along the way.

So. What I'm told is 'sacred' by the Great Church or its servants is not necessarily what I'd label 'sacred.'

I find much of nature to be sacred: ah, my beloved Mama Ocean, who heals, who washes away the insignificant, whose constancy is ancient. The mountains, old wisdom and that constancy again (well, maybe not so much the volcanic ones, but even they move and breathe and do as they are supposed to do). Any animal or bird or bug -- the flowers, the grasses, the trees -- how DOES a tree know when to pop its leaves, and isn't it a miracle and SACRED that they do every year, every single spring? How does that hummingbird DO that hover thing? Wow.

Our bodies are sacred temples, mysterious in the infinite ways they are engineered to carry us through life, that we are all so alike and yet so, so different. Babies are sacred little beings when they are born, innocent and unknowing and wise and perfect.

The energy of all things is sacred. We are all connected through that energy, and to practice feeling it, tapping into the ancient and endless well of energy is to touch immortality, or as close as we could come to knowing it. Meditation is a powerful way to do that. Being outside and consciously raising our individual energy to blend with that of the energy of all things around us is sacred.

I have been in places that hold a tangible energy and history, but I'm not sure I'd label them 'sacred' -- awe-worthy, perhaps, knowing the stones and wood and surroundings hold the traces of an energy that once inhabited that place, even recently. Communal energy raised in gratitude and praise and love is very powerful, and I often feel that in places of worship. Is that sacred? Perhaps.

I guess what makes something sacred for me is the purity of purpose and energy that marks a place or words or actions or even that which resides in a person. It simply IS, without agenda, without ego, and it resonates on a deeply personal, interior level. I am always grateful when I experience flashes of the sacred, and awed by the power it encompasses.

April Moon 14: Day 1 -- Courage

A new writing prompt series from Kat McNally, she of Reverb and August Moon and probably others that I am forgetting!

This one is for 14 days, sort of a check-in with oneself, and I am grateful for the reminders and for the timing.

Read more about it here. And play along. 


Today's prompt: Courage

What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?

So I'm slow actually getting started although I began this post on time and have been contemplating the concept for several days.

Courage is taking action because you simply cannot be where you are any longer, which is different from moving from one place to another because you physically cannot stay where you are. I believe courage can be both planned and spontaneous: either way, it requires coming to a place of non-acceptance within yourself for what your current circumstances are, and choosing to create or go to a different state of circumstances. Courage is always a bit scary, if not at the time, definitely in retrospect.

I'm not sure that makes sense even to me.

I know that it takes courage to walk into a classroom on your first day of school where you know no one. It takes courage to take off the training wheels on your bike or tell your dad to let go of the seat so you can pedal it all by yourself. It takes courage to read out loud a poem or a story created from your imagination to an audience. It takes courage to move to a new city and begin again, especially by yourself. It takes courage to ask a doctor for medical tests that you are terrified to do because you are terrified that they will show that your deepest fears are, in fact, accurate. (Yeah, I'm kind of there....)

I've done all these things and more. Courage has brought me tears, anxiety, opportunity, and great love. It excites me, scares me, challenges me, and sometimes eludes me, at least for a time. It is risk-taking at its deepest level: the interior risk, the risk to your well-being, your core self.

Mixed up with the idea of courage, at least for me, is the concept of faith. And no image for me more clearly identifies courage/faith than the one in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," where, desperate to save his father from dying, Indy steps off a ledge hoping that something will be there to keep him from falling.

(Oddly enough, this exact scene and movie was referenced in our daily reading this morning, in the book The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Marc Nepo. I have always loved the courage/faith image.) 

We find courage within to do something that we believe will make our lives better for the action. We find courage to do terrifying things because somewhere we have faith that no matter what, it will be all right. Like Indy, we step out into the abyss of not knowing, hoping desperately that there will be the strong rock bridge that will catch and hold us up. So far, so good....


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Another introspective opportunity I've been doing this week is the free Oprah-Deepok Chopra "Finding Your Flow" 21-day meditation series.  Follow the link to register and you can listen to the daily meditations. I am finding them strengthening and very helpful as I navigate this journey, and I am grateful for the opportunity.