Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Change’ Category

Aug 14

Threshold Moments

“At the threshold moment, when the True Self within is demanding emergence, things can go either way. We can let the crisis thrust us into the heart of transformation or we can regress into our same old patterns.”— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

“Yet there’s a third way to have a crisis: the way of waiting. That way means creating a painfully honest and contemplative relationship with one’s own depths, with God in the deep center of one’s soul. People who choose this way aren’t so much after peace of mind or justice as wholeness and transformation. They’re after soulmaking.” — Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

Thresholds and precipices.
Mountains and valleys.
Waiting and moving.
Mystery and clarity.
The makings of growing from one thing to the next.
Change, transition, transformation.
The circles, cycles, rhythms of living.
Soul molding, shaping and making.
Seeing our true reflection.
Round with pleasure.
Light with laughter, even, especially here.

“In the crisis we need to hang onto God’s little jokes, to those priceless moments when something round with pleasure bounces upon us. We need to hold onto the celebration of becoming, to the bliss that wells up from the deeper places we’re tapping.” — Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

Aug 1

2 Comments

Listen and Leap

“Like billowing clouds,
Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.”― Hildegard von Bingen

“Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.”― St. Hildegard of Bingen

Not long, but deep.
Shores to boundaries.
Not walk, leap.
Inquire, listen, intuit.
Beneath and beyond the noise.
A knowing in the unknowing.
A calling in the wilderness.
Answer, respond, act.
See and cast your own light.

“We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”― Hildegard of Bingen

Jul 11

Shifting and Shaping

“Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can.”― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

“And when the work of grieving is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.”
― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Things fall apart.
Things come together.
Shifting and shaping.
Trust in the wilderness of unknowing.
Gratefulness in arriving of healing.
Changed and moving forward.
Beginning again, and again.
The rhythm of life.
Renewal, clarity, mystery.
The path we are on together in different places.
Shared journey, some ahead, some behind.
Same and different.
Never alone.

“This is the lesson of age—events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different.”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems

Apr 20

To Begin Again, and Again…

“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.” – Barbara Sher

Today marks the one-year anniversary of starting a new job, changing after 17 years in the same place and a plan of retiring there. A big move later in my career when most would say stay, coast, and settle. You’re too old. Your time is up. Quiet quit.

Not me. I’m not done yet. We settle and stay in places that are stale, over and where we don’t fit and aren’t welcome anymore to avoid change at all costs. Working with a career coach got me out of my own way, challenged old narratives and limiting beliefs. She helped me do the work to uncover what was next and possible. So grateful a friend sent me her way!

This past year I became a beginner again. Exhilarating, daunting and transformational. It has been the best thing that I have done for myself in years. Don’t settle and acquiesce! Take time to reflect and plan, but don’t wait to have everything figured out. Have a direction and move, the road unfolds with action, a step at a time. If and when you make a mistake, then pivot, shift, try something else. Often it is merely a tweak or a shift in attitude. We learn from trying new things and beginning again and again. Life is too short to circle dead-ends. Break trail!

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas

Feb 12

The Lens of the Heart

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering… these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love… these are what we stay alive for.”― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”― William James

We are clear on what we are against, murky on what we are for.
It’s easier to criticize than create.
To “other” and “them,” to disregard, disconnect, dismiss.
The world is flat.
God is small.
Being “right” is enough.

May we have the fortitude to question, reframe, rethink and reshape our perspective.
To go beneath the surface of self to the root, to the core.
To see shapes, shadows, nuance, complexity, commonality, diversity, patterns, connection.
Weeding out the old, dry and stale.
Tilling the soil, planting newness, color and hue.
Unknowing, unlearning to expand, invite and open to depth and dimension.
Growth, change, transition, transformation.
Nurturing beauty, understanding, goodness, awe and wonder.
Widen the aperture to let in more light.
See through the lens of your heart.

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”― William James

Feb 11

Perception Reboot

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”― Walt Whitman

“To change one’s life:

  1. Start immediately.
  2. Do it flamboyantly.
  3. No exceptions.” ― William James

To what, who, when are you clinging to?
What hinges and holds?
Binding or freeing.
Tangling or unwinding.
And, or, all of the above, everything in between.
Create a foundation, a framework, principles.
Less rules, regulations, assumptions, limiting beliefs.
More wonder, awe, inquiry, opening.

Listen, examine, assess, dismiss, remove, replace, reboot.
We have a capacity and agency to change, transition and transform.
Choose and keep choosing each day.
One step, then the next, putting fear in its place, the sideline.
Present yet ignored.

Embrace, expand, step out.
Create, unfold, unfurl.
Clear your cache.
Perception reboot.

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds,”― William James

Jan 1

The Royal Road

“Self-acceptance is the path to self-forgetfulness, which is the royal road to Joy!” – Sarah Young

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

First day of the week.
First day of the month.
First day of the year.
As you enter the path into 2023, may peace, joy and love be your intention followed by effort.
May beauty, laughter and color capture your attention.
May light, gratitude and enthusiasm be your companions.
Eyes on the road ahead with a renewed hope and anticipation.
Small actions rather than grand gestures.
Travel well.
Share the road.
Be kind.

“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.” – Liberty Hyde Bailey

Nov 30

Transformation Time

“Time flies never to be recalled.” – Virgil

“Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.”― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

When circling the cul-de-sac of comparison, fairness, control, disappointment, expectations, hard right out.
Leave the familiar and flat behind, venture out and go deeper.
New map, new path, new territory.
Be kind and generous along the way, share the road, make space for other.
In the stillness of winter, create your spring.
Transformation time.

“Breaching out of their rooted darkness, breakthroughs are seeds of nonconformity determined to sprout into the light of freethinking.”― Monica Gagliano

Nov 13

Most Precious Today

“In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?”― Joan Halifax

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”― Lewis Carroll

Leave yesterday at the door and cross the threshold into now and the possibility of unfolding.
Letting go, forgiveness, gratitude, kindness unbind, free, loosen and release.
Lighten the load, only carry what is necessary, what serves you well.
New day, new person.
What is most precious today?

“Resolving grief means both to release ourselves from responsibility for all the things that weren’t up to us, and to come to terms with the choices we’ve made that can’t be undone.”― Edith Eger, The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life

Oct 5

3 Comments

Luminescence of Joy

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”― Philip Yancey

“Sometimes we are joyful because we have known grief. Sometimes we know grief because we have dwelled— for full long days or microcosmic minutes—in the sun-soaked luminescence of joy.”― Heather Lanier, Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir

A mixed bag.
Struggle and ease.
Sorrow and joy.
Fear and courage.
Surface and deep.
Weeds and flowers.
Fast and slow.
Waiting and arrival.
Yesterday and tomorrow.
All together in our days.
More unknowing than knowing.
Love, beauty, awe, wonder, hope, inquiry, reflection, peace, grace.
Dwell here in the unraveling and revealing.

“Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.”― Louise Erdrich, LaRose

« Older Entries
%d bloggers like this: