emerge

Building a Mystery

May 19, 2015

Clear away expectations, and let yourself picture a wild, grand new world. ~ Martha Beck

Caroline W Casey quote

I am sitting on my own in the gathering twilight. The jungle of the day is winding down, the jungle of the night is waking up. I was listening to a recorded call by Martha Beck and Boyd Varty, and they were talking about truth. They were talking about the importance of gathering and deep work and play and something bigger and deeper than magic. They were talking about connection.

They were speaking my language.

And in that way that the universe plays with us, as the talk finished, my shuffle went to Sarah McLachlan singing Building a Mystery.

That’s how I feel right now. Like I have been given a sacred gift: the gift of being able to build my life from the ground up. But it is currently a mystery.

And I don’t know what to do with it.

Martha and Boyd talked about not knowing where they were going, but knowing that they were going to be prepared to ‘move at dawn.’ To follow where the path leads.

Part of me would give anything for a crystal ball; for a way to see that we are going to be okay. But then it wouldn’t be a leap of faith. Part of me would like to be in total control and to have things work out exactly the way I want them to. But I know that would be an unnecessarily limited future as I can’t dream big enough for myself.

Caroline Casey, in Making the Gods Work for You, writes about playing with the universe and actively working with the magic and the stories and the stars. In the quote above she talks about conjuring the most beautiful and loving world, but it’s about collaboration with, not dominance over. It’s about moving forward and having faith and doing what you can to align with creation. It’s about listening. It’s about letting go. As I typed that, Sarah McLachlan (another song – Full of Grace – on shuffle, and I haven’t heard her on shuffle for years) sang ‘letting go’ exactly as I typed it.

Magic.

I’ll say it again: it’s about letting go.

It’s dark now, under the new moon. We are so deep in the jungle that the only light I can see is from a few scattered fireflies and a single light up on the ridge above us where the driveway onto our farm meets the dirt road. It’s a different world already, and it feels like anything is possible.

So right now I am asking for help. I am asking for a miracle. I am asking for transformational abundance. I am asking that together we conjure the most beautiful, loving world possible. And as always, I am asking for magic.

And now? I am letting it go.

Building a mystery is going to be so much fun.

I know it. 😉

emerge, writing, yes

Lost & Found: One Spiritual Practice

April 27, 2015

The soul can’t be explained or understood. Is it, after all, your divine Self, and divinity is wild, untamable – more vast and magnificent than our minds can grasp. Whatever idea or image you hold in your mind of the soul or the Divine is by definition too small. That’s why we feel so compelled to explore these fields of the soul. We long for the mystery. – Janet Conner

Meghan Genge writing There were always all of these wonderful things I was going to do once I had time. I was going to walk more, and do more yoga, and meditate more, and eat better. I was going to do all of those things because somehow I thought that they would make me more spiritual. They would bring me closer to the Divine, to God, to that best part of me who was nice and made really good decisions and had a great attitude most of the time.

Insert giggle/snort here.

Turns out that when I packed for Costa Rica, I packed myself. I packed the me who gets grumpy, and wants to eat Nutella more than she wants carrots, and the me who has a lot of yoga to do before yoga makes her feel blissful (right now it makes me feel angry), and who is a little afraid of walking because walking is a bit scary. There are things lurking under the fallen leaves both in reality and in my imagination that want to nibble on me.

So until a few days ago I was getting really frustrated. I was wasting time. I hadn’t landed in Costa Rica and then morphed instantly into a glorious Blue Morpho. I was getting grumpier by the day, reading in great gulping novel-sized afternoons, and wishing that I could somehow be different.

And then it happened.

I got up on Friday morning, picked up my pen and a battered notebook, and I started to write. And within one sentence, I remembered: Writing is my spiritual practice.

My simple connection had gotten lost in the sparkle on my Instagram feed, the gloss on my Pinterest pages, the bendy-holiness on Facebook, and my need to be different than I am. Yes, I will continue to meditate and do yoga – movement and stillness are as important to my growth as words – but for me, my doorway to that connection and my worship happens on the page.

When I arrive at the page, say a prayer, and pick up my pen, I slip easily into a conversation with my Soul, with The Mystery, with God, with whatever you think It is. And it is a conversation that is most definitely two-sided. We contemplate. We argue. We breathe. We bend. We talk. And I come out the other side different. Connected. Motivated. Altered. Writing doesn’t magically make me a shinier, nicer, better behaved version of myself, but instead I emerge a more grounded, honest, clear one. I’m the me that remembers that she is deeply, truly connected, so all of the rest of that ‘stuff’ can be seen with perspective and a lighter heart.

It’s magic. It’s a miracle.

How could I have forgotten? I was so busy comparing myself to other people’s spirituality, that I forgot about my own.

And so I will return to the page again and again, because writing is my practice.

It’s my holy.

It’s home.

Alignment, emerge, Leap and the net will appear

now

March 22, 2015

No one has escaped this process of shake down and shake up. If your life is still essentially the same now as it was three years ago I suspect that you have been in a cryogenic deep freeze. Or perhaps you’ve been vacationing on another planet. – Chris Zydel

fire move meg The past few days have apparently hosted a huge planetary dance: the end of something which began in 2012, the end of a 19-year cycle and the beginning of another.

No one can ever tell me ever again that the planets don’t have an effect on me.

“Make a powerful intention” the astrologers were saying as I handed in my notice and we decided to move to a different country.

“Let go”, the astrologers were saying as we sold/ gave away/ burned/ packed our belongings; reducing our ownership to the contents of a 5 x 5 x 7 foot crate.

“Everything is about to change” they said as I sat in my parents’ house, homeless, jobless, and in the space between one life and another.

They also say that on the new moon and the equinox, it is important to make a statement of intention – to put the coordinates into the GPS before you set off on a new month.

“The endings we face now, be they losses, disappointments or liberating closure, remind us of the need for deep and abiding alignment with the god-force from here on in, as it threads its way through our lives. – Sarah Varcas via Mystic Mama

These past few years and the past few months I have received proof again and again and again that there is more going on than I know. The support and the nudges and the help we’ve had as we’ve navigated these waters have been illuminating.

When you get a holy yes and you go with it, things won’t always be easy, but magic will happen.

So my intention on this day, as I sit on the edge of a new turn of the zodiac, a new 19 year cycle, a new lunar cycle and a new adventure?

Alignment.

I intend to follow the nudges, the holy yes, the god-force in my life. To believe in the magic of the total unknown, and to have faith in those decisions.

Because going with the magic is so much better than believing it isn’t there.

There is still time to join us!

Do you want to be part of a warm and open-hearted community of women, gathered around a virtual hearth fire? Would you like to join those women for discussion about spirituality, questions, self-care and magic?

Do you crave open, honest conversation about spirituality?

Then we would love it if you would join Sas Petherick and I for Heart and Hearth.

Older Posts

Building a Mystery

Clear away expectations, and let yourself picture a wild, grand new world. ~ Martha Beck

Lost & Found: One Spiritual Practice

now

No one has escaped this process of shake down and shake up. If your life is still essentially the same now as it was three years ago I suspect that you have been in a cryogenic deep freeze. Or perhaps you’ve been vacationing on another planet. – Chris Zydel

“The endings we face now, be they losses, disappointments or liberating closure, remind us of the need for deep and abiding alignment with the god-force from here on in, as it threads its way through our lives. – Sarah Varcas via Mystic Mama

Newsletter

New here?

Legal Stuff

My Instagram