Every time I face a challenge I do it in similar format. Just the music, food and costumes are different. As is the company I keep along the way. To get to the point where the journey has taken you farther than your closest friend or companion could go. Yet here we are facing a new decade of challenges. Except this time we face one another knowing in the future, at the apex of the next decade we will probably have been cast apart by the waves of destiny to focus our attention on other works.
I begin by taking that inventory. The inventory that tells me where I am. How I’m reacting. How I’m accepting myself internally. Where I am in reference to my own reflection. Can I even presently look myself in the eye? Have I forgiven myself for all the things I held over my own self? Regardless of the things other have held up, others fade into the background as I take this inventory. I don’t do it every year. But I have begun the practice of doing it every decade. It’s here that I make my big decisions. Is this serving me? Does this fill me with joy? Or is this burdensome? Is this causing unnecessary pain? What can I do about this? Keep and heal? Or let go and release? I’ve been releasing much. I began the slow process of releasing the material possessions thrust upon me by well meaning others. I say “well meaning” to reference anyone who exhibits an absence of malice. Though an absence of forethought, such as “how does this serve her?” we have all been programmed to acquire and give things, possessions, dust… as it were. This left me under quite a load. It’s amazing how quickly a formerly homeless person can acquire a mountain of stuff. The stuff slowly began leaving during last year’s blizzard and polar vortex. Now, as the mountain shifted and the weight is lessened, the internal inventory can begin. Even together, Pablo and I have been taking the marital inventory to see where we stand together and also as individuals. This gives us basis and foundations for working through conflicts that we’ve come to discover are most often misunderstandings or old unhealed traumas surfacing. As we do the shadow work, the internal healing, the diving into selves and our marriage we are seeing how strong one another truly has been. That is the strengthening of the vine. The commitment gives strength to stand through the pain, the mountain of stuff, the journey of forever and polar vortex. He who farms during the polar vortex is a worth individual. The onslaught against stuff goes on. We have banished single use bags. It will take time to cease the habit, but just like smoking conquered all those years ago, bags have had their last day on this farm. These are the things we’ve been working towards. Healthier on the outside. Healthier on the inside. Find a reason to live longer by living cleaner. Remembering to breathe. Remembering to ground. Remembering to clear. Remembering to feel the emotion and released. Never held. Never saved. Never stored. Send it forward along it’s way.
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Fat Tuesday will be here before you know it. For me, it has been looming on the horizon like a big ogre. I already know the following day I will begin a fast. I haven’t truly fasted, in the purest form for more than a decade. When I entered ministry, I did so following a profound fast. I didn’t enter ministry for the fulfilment of the fast, but it was a result of the path I was on at the time. My first and biggest fast was long. It was 40 days and I lost 40 pounds. Again, I wasn’t fasting for the purpose of weightloss. It was simply a byproduct of the journey I was on.
Fasting has often been viewed as something difficult. When I first began fasting it was admittedly difficult. The physical side effects were painful. I had headaches. My stomach hurt. There was real pain. However, those pains were temporary. My body soon adjusted. As I had eliminated certain things from my diet, I focused my energies on what I could have. I allowed myself healthier alternatives to the garbage I had been feeding my vessel. I grew a fondness for simpler food. I also gained an appreciation for the process of preparing delicious meals that I was eating. Following the big fast, I started fasting corporately with fellow believers. We began small. One lunch, one day, every week. During this time we gathered in prayer. Sometimes we talked first to catch up and marvel at the wonder of God to be so powerful to continue to bring us together. This wouldn’t last. Each of us would be separated one from another and flung far away. Each of us landing on fresh ground to begin blooming once more where we were newly planted. I’m not so scared this time. I’ve been through this process before. I’m aware that I won’t be alone. Some of you will join me. Maybe we will fast together online. Maybe we will do it privately at home. Maybe we will even gather together, sing songs and smoke instead of eating. For the stoner it will be interesting journey as “munchies” are actually on our calling card. I still am not certain how it will all play out until it’s over. I only know that once more I’m being called to fast. I hope you’ll give fasting a consideration. I hope you’ll join me. I never was good at making New Year’s resolutions. I’d not learned how to carry over an idea from one to the next. So I stopped. Just flat didn’t try to change or better myself for a couple of years. Then one year in Montana, overnight radio I was playing the single Stop and Smell the Roses by Mac Davis at precisely midnight on December 31, 1989. I brought in the 90’s deciding to Stop and Smell much more than roses and for far longer than a year. I decided on January 1, 1990, pregnant with my first child that I would stop and smell all the flowers for the rest of my life because I knew on that snowy night in Montana, smelling flowers made me happy.
And that is how it all began. I simply stopped taking part in new year resolution discussions. It wasn’t a ritual I was participating in. And my mission to stop and smell the flowers everywhere, always would take me places that nothing else did. Surely not radio. But the flowers I vowed to smell on that cold night would lead me to other cold places to see such magnificence in bloom. My own orchids are perched on my window sill, reaching for the forever fading light of every day. On the northeastern side, the orchids are perhaps even chilled. They do not seem to care. The next life resolutions that would come would shape my walk in a marvelous way. Deciding one decade to the next where I’d like to go, a bit like writing one’s own treasure map. Uncovering the hidden bits of self by deciding this is what makes me happy. This is coming into the future. And likewise, this which gives me pain, let me deal, heal and leave this solidly in my past. The resolutions are different this time. Last time it was all about the external. Having sensed the external is satisfied. The queen is on her throne, be the sacred surgeon of self and heal inside. My life resolution is take the journey within self to heal the fullness of my essence. I am no longer the person I was who did the things I did before. I am someone new with a grander and newer purpose. A much healthier purpose. As we reach for longevity, wisdom, may it forever be with good health in the fullness of body. This inner journey is taking me further within myself than I expected to go. However painful the journey, the joy of knowing that by facing, dealing and healing one more time for all time to allow the fullness of growth gives a modicum of peace. I am often amused that I am still here. Through so much. No different that the woman to my left and the man to my right. Who are also so amused as we look at each other and know we are much more survivors. We’re champions about to gain energy, strength and vigor. May we endeavor to be quiet and just #overgrow. |
AuthorMarihemp is a Mystic Archives
January 2024
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