May 1st, 2017

May 1st, 2017


Affirmation: I choose to make the best of what and who I am. I am brave, and I will thrive.


Word of the Day: hummock (n):

1. a rounded knoll or hillock

2. a ridge of ice

3. a fertile area in the southern United States and especially Florida that is usually higher than its surroundings and that is characterized by hardwood vegetation and deep humus-rich soil

perfidious (adj):

1. deliberately faithless; treacherous; deceitful: a perfidious lover.

The Question (1)

One dervish to another, What was your vision

of God's presence? I haven't seen anything,

but for the sake of conversation, I will tell you a story.

The presence is there in front of me.

A fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.

One group walks toward the fire, into the fire.

Another toward the sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly

in the stream. A head goes underwater

and the head pokes out of the fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire

and so end up in it. Those who love the water

of pleasure and make it their devotion

are cheated with this reversal. The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth, saying

I am not fire. I am fountainhead

Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

If you are a friend of the presence,

fire is your water.

The Question (2)

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets

of mothwings, so you could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire and go to the light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming.  Water, world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other.

To these eyes you have now, what looks like water burns.

What looks like fire is a great relief to be inside.

You have seen a magician make a bowl of rice

seem a dish of tiny, live worms. Before an assembly, with one breath he made the floor swarm with scorpions

that were not there. How much more amazing God's tricks.  Generation after generation lies down defeated, they think, but they are like a woman underneath a man, circling him.

One molecule-mote-second of considering

this reversal of comfort and pain

is better than any attending ritual.

That splinter of intelligence is substance.

The fire and water themselves?

Accidental, done with mirrors.

_____

Purpose

According to the Dictionary of Word Origins, the word “purpose” came from the Latin word proponere, which means “declare” or “put forward.” The word “declaration” invokes such a sense of strength for me. It is a powerful word. It is hard to make a declaration meekly. A person doesn’t “timidly” make a declaration. The very sentence, “he ambivalently declared his position” sounds rather nonsensical. I am also willing to wager that the founding fathers of the United States did not consider titling the Declaration of Independence the Proposal of Independence or the Suggestion of Independence.

Today, I invite you to write your own Declaration of Independence. Don’t just think about what you would want to write – actually spend some time jotting it down. For example, you might decide to declare your independence from your mother and father if you struggle to see, act, and/or treat yourself like an adult because you continue to yield to their decisions for your life or if you. Or you might choose to write yourself a declaration of independence from your harsh inner critic, your perfectionism, your “should” monster, or your people-pleaser. You may even decide to write a declaration of independence form overworking or thinking too much if doing so is compromising your relationships or if it is getting in the way of your taking necessary action.

Declaring your independence, then, is an empowering tool that can help you step into the unknown that we must all face and that we all (reasonably and to varying degrees) fear. To declare one’s independence is to declare oneself worthy of – and even requiring – such a declaration. Without such a declaration we are often left stuck in unhelpful patterns and habits and guessing at our life’s purpose.

My bottom-line hope and request to every person (including myself!) is to not give up and not to quit. It is to rest when you must but to commit to getting back up when you can, continuing to move forward, no matter how slow the progress is and even when you are convinced that you don’t have it in you to keep going. This likely sounds discouraging – and it is – but the fact is that most challenges in our lives will not fit into neat packages. Often what we need most is to stop digging the holes we a digging, taking a deep breath and a step back, and declaring independence from the internal message that tells us to give up.

When I have refused to quit and give up on myself, I might feel awful and worn down at the end of the day, but my self-respect remains intact. Remember: there is often a big difference between how you are feeling and how you are doing. You may be doing well (that is to say, that you remain committed in thought and action to taking care of yourself, for example), but you can still feel horrible. In my experience, when we’re learning to take responsibility for ourselves, it definitely is one of those darker before dawn times!

- What is the relationship between the way you are doing and feeling right now? What might be impacting each? How would you like to be doing?

- What is one thing you would like to declare independence from? What has or is preventing you from doing so?