channel of grace: but for myself? ::

All that happens to me becomes bread to nourish me, soap to cleanse me, fire to purify me, a chisel to carve heavenly features on me. Everything is a channel of grace for my needs. The very thing I sought everywhere else seeks me incessantly, and gives itself to me by means of all created things.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade

(via sara)

i put it here to remember.

i'm a bit growly today. times like this i reflect on my word choice for the year, which has transformed me in so many ways ~ sacred ~ and i wonder how to look for sacred in the ache? in the heart-clutter? in the clenching?

in my own shame?

i was deeply triggered yesterday and today i wrestle old ways, old thought patterns, shame as old as the dust of eden. and then there is shame for shame, you know? as in, i have healed and learned so much over the years; i should be past all this. however, i do know that when we are triggered it means there is something lurking that needs attention. my job is to listen, to learn gentleness again, to forgive myself, seventy times seven.

and then, with sacred orchestration, the organic sister writes exactly what i need to read. 

today is no exception.

when your spirit is all screechy and everything feels wrong inside, when your heart is prickly like a porcupine and you don't like anyone, what do you do to become still and serene and all lovey-dovey again?

me? at the moment i opt for escapism. i've mixed a mimosa, turned on pandora, and i nestle down. just for fun, i will start here.

where should i go next? :-)

(and thanks to those of you who have poured love all over me today. 

you know who you are.)

happy thanksgiving! ::

wise words for today:

::
here is a must-read article from the organic sister:

“I should be grateful.”
“You should be grateful.”

And my heart would hear those words and want to yell “No!”
And now I know why. Why I resisted what seems so true.
Because every time we feel as though we “should be” grateful, we negate the pain or hurt or struggle that we are experiencing in that moment, instead of gratitude.
We tell our tears to stop. We tell ourselves to suck it up. That others have it worse. And so who the hell are we to ache, to hurt, to need to cry, or to desire change when we have it so good.

“It could be worse, so we should be grateful.”

And in thinking that “it could be worse”, we ignore what is yearning for attention right now.

Because if someone else has it worse, we don’t deserve to have it better.

  "the experience of gratitude is not a should"

::
sending love today, friends, and remembering those who have recently lost loved ones.

haunting eden ::

when i was a kid we had a girl-dog named abbey. we had lots of dogs throughout my childhood, all mutts or strays or the progeny of strays, but she was my favorite. she always stayed with me when we played. she didn't run off to explore like all the boy dogs did. her ears flopped when she ran and she was soft and i pretended she was all mine, even though she was a family dog who belonged to everyone.

one day she went away and never came back.

::

i tried to be a good girl.
i wasn't always, but i tried. sometimes i look back on earlier years and wonder how things would be if i'd always been good? but what does good mean? who defined it for me?
who defines it for me now?

::

i think if i was absolutely all-the-time good according to their definition of good
one day i'd just go away
and never come back.

::

maybe i did.

::

i saw a saying on pinterest.
(i love my pinterest. it makes me happy.)
it said: you cannot be lonely
if you love the person
you are alone with.

but i'm not so sure.

sometimes your soul is so interconnected with the other world that in this life you are left always wanting. it doesn't mean you are unhappy, really, but that you were uprooted from eden with violence and

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoken with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
~ u2

::

i am surrounded by love, love of a life-creating kind, love from the ancient holy darkness, love that haunts eden. love that brings me chamomile tea and strokes my hair till i fall asleep and makes me laugh, even when i've forgotten how. i am loved with love so magnificent my soul swells to bursting.

i love with that dangerous kind of love, the kind that edges on madness.
it is in that madness, i think, that i find my enigma: loneliness has many faces. grief. desire. addiction. yearning for community, for together::with, for soul-communion. and the answer? i think that when you grow up learning that only the good are worthy of true love, of acceptance and nurture, it leaves you wanting, always wondering, always just a little hesitant and second-guessing.

am i good? are you?

::

what if the truth is that
the bad
are the most worthy and deserving
of love?
what if this is the inside out, upside down
backwards otherworld
of grace?

::

dream wrestler ::

“let them free. let them live unmolested by the rules, the religious duty, the expectations.”

~ mandy steward

by mandy steward, featured in tomorrow's dreams today.

do you ever feel like you've lived your life in epitaphs and cliches? and you look up one day and don't know where you are, who you are, or what life is about anymore? and you look through a messy haze at your lover, and hold his (or her) hand, and quietly say,

“i don't know how to dream anymore.”

i wish it was easy.
i wish i could tell it like a story, with once upon a time inviting you to snuggle in for delicious adventures. i wish i could say, i was nineteen. twenty, maybe? the day i stopped dreaming.

but how do you isolate life's moments when your everyday becomes grit and drudge? how do you isolate those moments when the grittiness and drudgery of everyday paint over hope?

when you lose the daydream child?

life becomes bleak when you lose her, when you send her away because she's impractical and silly and you're in collections, now, because your bills just.won't.stop. you're too tired for her; you're an adult with adultish responsibilities. you've put away childish things, and at the end of the day, you can barely move muscle while your eyes glaze over and you avoid, you avoid her, because the simple act of getting through the day

hurts.

we stop dreaming because we desperately want to stop feeling.
we stop feeling because we want to stop hurting.
we stop hurting when we stop caring

about being free.

it is in all of us to defy expectations, to go into the world and be brave, 
and to want, to need, to hunger for adventures; 
to embrace change and chance and risk so that we may breathe 
and know what it is to be free. ~ mae chavrette. purchase here.

tomorrow's dreams today

“I think if we follow our dreams deep enough and long enough, we too have to stand at the great chasm of this gaping question. I don't think it's something we wrestle with once either. We'll return to it at multiple times, at different ages, at different levels of exposure to other's pain. How does what I want out of this life matter in the light of all this suffering and death? Aren't I selfish to want, to desire, to believe in so much more? Aren't I selfish to dream at all?

As I think about all the areas of much-needed redemption and restoration in our world my breath becomes labored. I start to question all the good things in my life. I shouldn't have joy because others don't have joy. I shouldn't get to live out my dream because others don't get to live out their dreams. I shouldn't get to foolishly spend my time with paint and words when there are people being murdered or raped or tortured or enslaved. And I start to realize what a sad life mine must become, if I entertain this game of matching suffering to suffering.” ~ Mandy Steward, Tomorrow's Dreams Today

in her new e-book, mandy steward invites you to feel again.

this means, of course, that it's also an invitation to pain. but it's a desperate, i-need-life, survivor-kind of pain and vulnerability which open up mysterious worlds that heal, nourish, and resurrect the stifled child-like place where dreams begin.

and it gives you permission to dream them.

i finished reading this book last night and even now i marinate in a warm, redeeming aura of possibility and hope. it's okay to walk headlong into an ache and wrap my arms around it? and somehow, through it, we both become transformed?

we both become beautiful?
we both come alive?

yes, she whispers.

just: yes.

found on pinterest. origin and artist unknown.

have you said yes lately?

:: i want to hear your story. ::

labyrinth ::

i went thrifting today, and i saw her, a girl i wish i could know. she looked delicious, wrapped warm in cabled gray, feet stuffed into earthy boots, and layer upon layer of colors closing her in. golden curls poofed from the collar of her green coat, and feathers dangled from her hair.

feathers dangled from my hair.

i wish i'd said hello.
said um, hi, i like your feathers?
something. 
kind of like when your soul looks up in recognition, you know? but life moves on and we move out the door into the wind-blown world.

i wish i knew her too, heard her story. via pinterest. photographer and subject unknown.

every year wraps her rings around me, and i think this is why i layer myself so, both skin and soul. a labyrinth, these layers, a kind of wild heart-maze that only the determined survive; only the safe ones, the beautifully brave who weather the black and the light, the sorrow and the ecstasy, the speaking and the silence, the sojourn and rest.

and i grow old like a tree.