Idle and Blessed

Brene Brown says, borrowing from Michelle Buck, that "we've got to stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that we do not belong, because we will always find it." I'm the most guilty of this. The MOST guilty. Brene says we do not negotiate our belonging externally -- we do not negotiate it with other people   --but rather we carry it within ourselves. And only when we carry a sense of belonging within ourselves are we able to confirm our belonging in our communities -- to receive and affirm our place in the world. Wow. It's a hard time to be alive in this world. It's a really scary and disconnected and maddening time to be human right now. Much less to be human within the unpredictable and uncontrollable groups of people we are asked to belong to! Our social groups, churches, neighborhoods, schools, cities, clubs, countries, yoga studios, etc., etc., are incredibly unstable in this era of individualism + fear. We have lost a shared sen...

Sometimes I think life is just one long lesson in going easier on ourselves. This isn't everyone's story, surely. But for the perfectionists and doers and movers (and distance runners) out there, the whole thing may be about going easier on ourselves. Giving ourselves some space. Watching ourselves somehow from above, clinging so tightly down there inside our hearts to ideals, and slowly...slowly...painfully...releasing. Anxiety is a funny thing, because it markets itself as something real and urgently necessary. Like, necessary for survival. At the beginning on my journey facing anxiety, I thought releasing it would mean losing my very sense of self. Who would I be without my drive to fix things? Without fear keeping me on my toes? Without my sixth sense for imperfection reminding me to improve? I had come to identify so strongly with the perfectionistic voices in my head that I no longer knew my own voice. Did I have one? It's very quiet. Behind my anxiety there i...

I'm not sure about you guys, but 2017 has turned out to be a pretty rough year for me. I can't even remember where my head was on January 1 (didn't I have a theme for the year or something?), but I can say with certainty I reached none of my goals or expectations or intentions for 2017. It was a whole different animal. Not that it has been devoid of good things; like all of life it's been a mixture of good and bad, joy and despair, peace and fear, calm and chaos. But we moved twice this year, and I quit two jobs, and I've spent a whole year applying to PhD programs and I'm not done yet. Lots of change, uncertainty, stirring up, letting go, saying no, saying yes, uprooting. In some ways, I am ending this year more in touch with myself than ever before. I've said yes to my needs this year, and said a painful no to some other people in the process. I've spent time, tears, and heartache exploring some of my coping strategies for life that haven't alw...

God is like the moment in a forest when the wind stops and no one is breathing and there are somehow no squirrels and for a moment there is absolutely nothing except the world just being . For a moment, not even a hint of change. Not even a hint that God breathes. Isn’t he supposed to breathe? And I’m the one just dancing on the leaves and making some ruckus to encourage God to start talking to me in the forest, or at least laughing at my silliness, not because I’m afraid of the quiet, but because I’m concerned that God has stopped breathing. I’m the little girl running and jumping on God’s body earth, poking him to wake, tugging at his leg, like a daughter pulling on her dad’s coat from so far below. “Hello there God, let’s make some noise, do you like me, do you hear me, are you awake?” I know God is I Am ( is-ness ) and maybe there are moments when God dances with us but I haven’t seen that side of God in a very long time. One time I saw a dog run over in the midd...

Dear self, I know you crave wholeness, and you think that means perfection, like somehow being imperfect will shatter you into pieces of unimportance. Like plastic jewelry crushed on a sidewalk, only useful for the moment it made someone else happy. I know you think the way to wholeness, perfection, is efficiency in all your tasks, like there's a shortage of time on the clock of your life, and laughing wastes the seconds and the oxygen around them. Like you must take up less space in the world, and do things faster, and do them better. And stop breathing so much. I know you think your feelings need to justify themselves to you before appearing, and that you are worried about letting them run the show. And I know there are good reasons you've come to see emotions this way, and that you are protecting yourself, and I want to tell you that's ok. I want to tell you it's ok to face the fears that are underneath your controlled calm waters. I want to tell you there ...

[it sounds cliche, but,] God is a lot like the ocean. Its waves are steady...relentless. There's no end to its supply. It moves things and is moved by them. Has no clear boundary. It looks a little bit different every day. A new vantage point can alter your perspective completely. Some days are chaotic, loud. Powerful and strong. Other days, just still. Silent. It can beat up that sand, and push you over, nose burning, throat coughing. Yet fosters all the life that exists. Jellyfish, sea turtles, me. Tiny protozoa. Gross thing like that. And also, us. I don't know why God knocks us over, and is other times surfable and warm. I don't know why God is so salty and un-thirst-quenching (or perfectly sustaining, if you're another sort of creature) (depends on where you are born) (unfortunately) But I do know the beach never holds onto its shape. And after each wave, it changes. Does not cling to "I...

There is so much talk in our culture, especially my 20-something micro-culture, about finding your bliss: waking up every morning to the dream you've created for yourself. That job that fulfills you, and pays you to get lost in the flow of your passion. I have friends who are entrepreneurs, creatives, curators, business-savvy purveyors or fashionable social media experts. Friends who seem to be making everything in their world turn out so beautifully for the good - owning homes, landing the careers, having the pretty babies on the side. I'm glad we are waking up to the possibility that God created us to do things that matter and affect change in our society. But some days I just feel like there's something wrong with me if I don't have that fulfilling job, or at least a plan to get there. A niche market for my skills. Or if there's no niche market, it's cool, as long as I'm a self-starter who created it for myself a couple years ago. The most excitin...