tender moments and empathy

Sometimes two days is all that it takes.

When it's with a dear friend, when it involves a canoe and camping, when the weather and every other detail is perfect, when there is space and time for conversations, for swims in the nude, for song...and then another song.

I just experienced such a blissful couple of days. It included deep listening and sharing too. In the slow flow of our time together we found ourselves opening, revealing, touching deep desires as well as the places that are tender. Places I thought I had moved on from.

All of this was held with empathy - both in the heart of my friend but also my own heart. I am reminded to stay gentle with myself. I feel what I feel. It is what it is. I can hold both the beauty and the pain at the same time...and even see the beauty in the pain. Strange...but true.

Bolstered and more aware of my heart I now head off to a weekend of music and community...and possibly more tender moments. Blue Skies...one of the wonders of the world in my view. It embodies all of the values I hold dear. And a person I loved and let go of.

So....one moment at a time I will live each emotion that comes along... the full spectrum. I will keep music at the centre. I will appreciate the music offered. I will play and sing and share my own songs.  I will simply drink in the community energy and joy that surrounds me...allow it to hold and nurture me. It's going to be beautiful. 

May you also have a place, a person, a community experience to go to, that holds you gently in your tender moments.

the novel of novels

I'm reading novels again. It is an absolute joy to be returning to this simple pleasure. Especially while gently rocking in the hammock, feeling the light breeze, occasionally glancing out at the trees

I gave up the habit a long time ago when I noticed I couldn't put novels down to attend to the other things in my life. Played a lot of Russian Roulette. I began to reserve fictional reading to holiday time...and before long that dwindled too.

For the past few months, perhaps stimulated by my shifts at our local library, I have been diving in again. I love how it can restore my energy after a spout of doing or giving. Though I can still get caught up in a story such that I forget the rest of the world, I think I'm a bit more balanced now.  (Perhaps because I'm giving myself permission to?)  Instead of feeling guilty I savour the experience, sink into it wholeheartedly.

As someone with a dream to share her own words, thoughts, stories...this simple pleasure also serves as a support mechanism. My delight in reading is a reminder of how words and perspectives can uplift, provoke, comfort and inspire. May this realization be one more step towards my own written work...however that may manifest itself.

What pleasure are you avoiding? How does denying yourself this experience affect you? What would happen if you gave yourself permission to try it again?

stillpoint

It seems many roads are leading me to acknowledge, embrace and accept that I am indeed where I need to be. And right now that entails non-activity, non-striving, non-productivity. Simply being, observing and noticing. 

This too is part of the creative and the writing process. Can I accept this? Not easily. Social conditioning, along with certain personality characteristics, do get in the way at times.

Last week one of our Wakefield Fringe guests, Alison Wearing ["Confessions Of A Fairy's Daughter"] talked about writing looking a lot like this:  and she slumped in her chair, gazing out into space. I recognized myself. I felt somewhat affirmed. 

Earlier today I had my first coaching session with Laura.  My homework challenge this week is to spend an hour a day this week not working on this illusive book project...and to journal about not working on it. Curious juxtaposition. Not quite sure what that will surface but I'm looking forward to seeing what does.

And just now I re-read a post I saved from Wild Artist and received another affirmation for me to be exactly where I am:

To sing, you must put courage behind your song. To be heard, you must put heart and time into your song. But first you need to pause. Power comes from the quiet inside. The power to paint.

Except for the point, the stillpoint,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
     - T.S. Eliot

Balance requires a still point. Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point; your dance needs to start first in a place of quiet reflection, meditation, prayer.

I can almost see myself see-sawing between my various wishes and paradoxes, swinging up and down, bumping hard each time one end hits the ground. I feel viscerally the chaos I've been experiencing as I struggle to choose something, anything...just get moving, doing, producing something!

But now these words, these gifts from others, are allowing me to see my daydreaming, my non-action as this still point, a possible birth place for something to be born. I am just a bit more able to accept that this non-doing, non-focused time is actually a necessary part of the process for me to move forward with ease and integrity. Eventually. When it's time.

Once again what is right now (when I stop struggling against it) is actually quite perfect.