Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take. ~ David Whyte
What is your first step?
Start close in
Winter landscape
Winter landscapes have the appearance of death and all the potential of resurrection. The whole mystery and power and glory of life is on display during winter.
How do you lean into that potential?
Galaxies
“When I think of the incredible, incomprehensible sweep of creation above me, I have the strange reaction of feeling fully alive. Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning…I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this—and out of nothing—can still count the hairs of my head.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle
What do the galaxies awaken within you?
There is a wave of gratefulness
“…this can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.” ~ David Steindl-Rast
How do you ride the wave of gratefulness?
Drawing the soul
Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century)
What is your soul drawn to?
Invite wonder
“What if you bowed before every dandelion you met and wrote love letters to squirrels and pigeons who crossed your path? What if scrubbing the dishes became an act of single reverence for the gift of being washed clean, and what if the rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots became the drumbeat of your dance? … There are two ways to live in this world: As if everything were enchanted or nothing at all.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim
What shall it be?
With the Eyes of the Heart 