(A twist on my Instagram tag #fivethingstoday. Just some small musings found in the tiny moments of life. You are receiving this because you have expressed interest in my work,
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November 12, 2021
Hello there,
Some thoughts, some musing, some blessings. In other words another week of living.
1. Mary knows. She just does.
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
"Heavy” by Mary Oliver.
2. This little Peperomia Frost keeps me company at my desk. I take it as good sign it is happily putting out so many new leaves. For far to long my desk was too much of a piled up disaster area for there to be room, let alone safe room, for a bit of living nature. I have build
a ritual out of clearing my desk and I know this little companion is a big reason I stay with it.
Beauty is not trivial, it is life giving.
3. Pretty plant and clear desk aside, much of my physical space is pretty much a mess. After two years of the extreme weight of life, things are, well decidedly not beautiful.
In case you need to hear this because I surely do in moments of harsh self-shaming, it is ok to be mess. It ok to not live in an inspirational Instagram way. The gritty truth is way more interesting, if perhaps a great deal harder than a filtered image. Or maybe not. There is a kind of soul pain that comes from honing an image you wish were you.
Some energy is returning as my grief turns from ripping, flooding pain to tender heartbreak. How I know it is returning is that I am slowing reclaiming some spaces of order and beauty, like my desk. I'm giving myself permission for it take as long as it takes and embracing the power of contentment when I complete a space.
Here is little before of the bedroom floor that had accumulated a pile of things I did not have the energy to find space for while dealing with other things. That pile had been faithful holder, a shrine in a way, to what I could not handle for a long time. I am thankful for it, if also embarrassed. We all have our ways of handing what we can't handle, one of mine is making piles.
That lovely filtered photo of my plant friend reflects a truth about me, and this does also. Life, my life, yours too maybe, is a complex, nuanced mess a lot of the time with spaces of clarity and sense appearing sometimes. I want to normalize the ongoing messy churning, digesting, alchemizing process life is with honor and empathy and love.
The mess is as holy as the order.
This shrine to the holy mess of living was transformed into 4 bags of donations, some bags of sorted yarn and fabric for future projects, boxes of family photos that will be a whole thing unto itself to sort, and space my yoga mat for some gentle stretching. It is still not finished but it is complete for now. It is still not beautiful but the afternoon shadows are and they now have room to dance.
4. It is ok to be mess, and it is it is also ok to quit. I was on a call for a program I am in and let's just say it wasn't my vibe. I spent a good amount of time working really hard to find meaning and insight for myself. I am good at this. Extracting learning and finding relevance to my experience. But in this case I was working really hard, really, very hard, for something that was just not for me. So I
left the Zoom meeting and reclaimed some time for myself.
So simple, right? Just hit the big red " leave" button. But as someone who is still unlearning the good student, good girl role that would have me sit quietly and politely through a waste of my time, leaving was big thing.
We have a right to claim sovereignty over our time.
Image from The Wild Unknown by Kim Krans
May beauty and hope lead you though the inevitable struggles of living.
Sandi Davis
(c)2021 Sandi Davis
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