"I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed." -Anne Lamott

 
I was really honored to talk with the lovely Annika Martins about A Morning Walk on AnnikaTV.  Her entire program is about spirituality on your own terms.  See our conversation here: http://bit.ly/KgLuQm
 

"Tear off the mask. Your face is glorious." - Rumi

 

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable." - Mary Oliver

 

"Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty and all embarrassment into laughter." - Beldon Lane

 

With that Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,

  "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;

  Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying

With that sweet moon

  Language

What every other eye in this world

  Is dying to

  Hear.

- Hafez

 
YOUR REAL QUEST

It is not enough
to find your passion
you must fight for it too
defend your right to crackle
with intensity
beware the gusts of distraction
and the erosion of your spark
that can happen when
you’re not looking
and when the muse
ignores your plea
become a warrior
that beats the deadness away
for this is your real quest anyway
to drink in the tiny changes
that can take an average life
and make it thunder with joy.

- Samantha Reynolds, Bentlily

http://bentlily.com/2013/12/03/your-real-quest/
 
I went away on a solo retreat in the mountains a few weekends ago.  It was nourishing - I felt connected and reawakened.  Upon returning, my beautiful pal Heidi Rose Robbins posted a poem on her blog from her upcoming book, This Beckoning Ceaseless Beauty, that absolutely took my breath away.  It hit me somewhere in the gut and tears sprang to my eyes.  It felt like an exclamation point that defined my time away.  A gift wrapped in fire.  Heidi's book comes out worldwide on December 10th.  For more information, look here: http://www.heidirose.com/#!read/cdan.  But before that, sink into this - 

I can no longer be contained.
I’m busting out like a storm.
I’m the weather, baby and
it’s okay
to rearrange
shake it up
rain it down
like a torrent,
a lightning strike,
sweet spring rain.

I can no longer be contained.
Because I’m breathing now.
All the way down to the belly
of who I am
and I am tired of constraint,
of holding myself back,
tied up, tied down.
wrapped in doubt,
retraction,
contraction,
subtraction.

I am pacing like a pregnant rhino.
And I’ve been pregnant for a long time.
It’s birth time baby,
the season of birth.

I am a woman in my prime
like a number that cannot be divided.
It’s time to own it,
full out time to unfurl, uncurl,
dance it out, dance it in, love.

I can’t stand still.
Don’t want to.
It’s not about composure
It’s about composing.

I am moving now,
speaking now
and my throat has become
a tunnel of love.
Can’t stop the truth,
it’s pouring out,
and the truth is beauty
but sometimes hard to hear.

Because we are used to our complaint.
We are married to our fear.
We are enmeshed in our anger.

And that’s life, right?
It’s all good.

It’s all good
Until we are tired of what contains us,
what constrains us.
It’s all good until we want something more,
That doesn’t define us,
that doesn’t confine us.

I am pacing like a wild thing
who is tasting her natural habitat.
It’s where it’s at.
It’s calling me now.
Lush and green and howling.
And Free.
Free to be
you go it
free to be

Me.



 

"The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy." - Pema Chodron

 
"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation." - J. Krishnamurti