December 31--Bigger Bliss Ahead

I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.  --Joseph Campbell

    I have experienced this. I have just passed the 10-year anniversary of Forrest Yoga Teacher Training and the four-year anniversary of beginning my MELT Method training. Teaching both of those has been pure bliss for me, and opened wonderful doors to friendship, growth, health and ongoing learning. 

    "Don't be afraid." That's a mighty order in a society that seems to thrive on encouraging fear. Last night I watched the Netflix movie, "Don't Look Up." It is both a hoot and terrifying at the same time. The comet in the movie is analogous to the pandemic. The movie nails our current situation perfectly, which is why it is so scary. I won't give any more away. Do watch all the way through the credits--the bit of humor at the very end is essential. 

    Let's expand our bliss in 2022!

        Leta

December 30--Growing Faith

Faith is not something to grasp; it is a state to grow into.  --Mohandas Gandhi

    Living makes us grow in faith, whether or not we care to apply it. If we are blessed with some degree of wisdom as we age, we learn evermore that there is very little in life over which we have control. I have to depend on Something Bigger than me to take care of all that. I've been a card-carrying control freak--I learned from one of the best--my mother. What a huge relief it was, mostly coming from the 12-Step program, to learn that I was not responsible for EVERYTHING. 

    Faith is a practice. It is easy for me to have faith in "small" things. But then there are BIG things, like will my sons live long, healthy, happy lives? It is tough not to worry about them. I must often remind myself that there is Something that loves them and cares for them more than I can even comprehend. There is divine order, a divine plan. I can relax (if I choose). 

    Growing daily,

        Leta

From Illuminations at Botanica, Wichita

December 29--Maintaining Hope

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.  --Samuel Butler

    So true and concise! Note as I write this that I'm using this quote as though "faith" is replaced by "hope." I think either word makes the quote a truthful statement.

    Last night my husband and I were discussing 2020, 2021 and having hope, especially relative to the pandemic. As awful as 2020 was, we had hope that 2021 would be better. Well, not so much. Illness still killed thousands more and events were cancelled and/or postponed. Political divisions intensified. In extensions of my own family, word was made known that if one was not vaccinated, one was not to attend celebrations. The lingering Covid virus in all its forms is a huge threat to our hope. 

    I told my husband I still have hope for 2022. This is in part because I avoid the fear-based news as much as possible. I see us humans learning, adapting, and changing for the better, albeit a dreadfully slow process. I'll likely lower my expectations somewhat, for instance relative to travel, but that's not a terrible thing.  

    I'm not letting Covid kill my hope and faith. Hang in there!

        Leta

I have faith that Fort Collins golf 
will happen in 2022!

December 28--Bigger Than Me

If the stars should appear just one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

    My approach on this one is about what it takes for a person to believe and put faith in Something Bigger than oneself. We are surrounded by the mystical, the magical, the (as yet) unexplainable, and we tend to take those things for granted. I offer the example of stars (per Emerson). Some of those "stars" we see in the night sky are actually whole galaxies. Other examples would be the formation and birth of a human baby, our bodies' ability to heal, the infinite variety of life on Mother Earth, and such mysteries as the pyramids and Stonehenge. There is so much that I don't understand that it is easy for me to rely on a Higher Power that has things in divine order. I couldn't handle that job!

    Life tends to hand us things that seem impossible to overcome--loss of a loved one, addiction, serious illness, accidents, natural disasters, raising teenagers. To survive some of those things, I had to draw on strength beyond my own willpower. I can't name it, but I know it is there.

    Whatever it takes,

            Leta

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster
by Damien Cannane

December 27--Reason and Faith

 Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right. By these we reach divinity.   
--John Dunne

    I'm not so sure on this one. I see "reason" as hanging in one's head space. I see "faith" as hanging in one's heart space. I think we need to rely more on the heart in the quest for divinity. Our heads can all too easily lead us astray, but the heart already knows our divinity. As a spiritual counselor, and in my own personal journey, I see far too many of us living in the head space rather than the heart space.  More often than not, when encouraged to give "thoughts and feelings" on a matter, folks will easily express many thoughts, yet be challenged to name feelings. A balance between reason and faith is a worthwhile goal. I would even suggest a little heavier leaning on the faith-and-heart-wisdom end of the spectrum. 

    It's a practice. 

        Leta

Looking forward to Illuminations
at Botanica this week...
makes my heart sing with joy!

December 26--The Day After

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.   --Kahlil Gibran

    We had a lovely, heart-warming Christmas together, our two sons, daughter-in-law, two pups, my husband and me. We gave lots of "practical" gifts like socks, mugs, gift cards and garden stuff. My older son, knowing my extreme love of Legos, gave me the 1000-piece puzzle pictured below. It will most definitely be an act of faith that enables me to assemble this one. What a hoot!

    Breathe, relax, enjoy this day of rest...

        Leta

December 25--Devotion

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.  --Henry Miller

    From Father Richard Rohr's Dec. 14 "Daily Meditation":

Father Richard shares why he believes devotion, or heart-centered faith, is essential to life's journey.

I want to encourage the uncovering of what we mean by the word devotion. We have to somehow live a life that’s connected to the heart. Otherwise, we get into head ideology, righteousness, opinionatedness, and insisting on the right or wrong words. All are ways of avoiding the heart and staying in the head!

I have to admit that I’ve learned this kind of devotion from good old-time Catholics and healthy evangelicals. They’re invariably heart-based people who look out at reality with soft eyes. We can usually see it in their calm face or the natural smile on their lips before they even start talking. Trust that first impression, it is seldom wrong.

If our message at the CAC (Center for Action and Contemplation) is not heartfelt and creating heartfelt people, I predict it will not last, and it doesn’t deserve to last. It’ll be another head trip that we can argue about. I think it was the gift of the early Franciscans, although I don’t know that we, as the later Franciscan Order, always kept it. Francis and the early friars had a heartfelt quality that made them dear to people. Not everyone always agreed with Francis on things such as not going to war or radical poverty—but authentic, heartfelt, devoted people cannot be dismissed.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was talking about when he taught, “Blessed are the pure of heart” (Matthew 5:8). It’s having achieved a purity of intention, desire, and motivation that isn’t about me—how I look and whether people are going to like me or affirm me. I think we all have to purify our intention several times a day: “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” If we don’t localize our intention in the compassionate space that we call the heart, it all becomes about making an impression that will ultimately benefit ourselves. We are all attracted to those loving people who are concerned about others more than themselves and concerned about us specifically. It’s really quite beautiful. We feel softened, we feel held, we feel more tender around people like that.

We can’t fake devotion but sometimes I do suggest we “fake it till we make it,” as many say. We need to practice some kind of heart-opening prayer and practice being compassionate and kind toward others. Eventually our hearts, as John Wesley said, will surely be “strangely warmed” [1] and no one is more surprised than we are!

This is one of the hardest things in the teaching of spirituality because we cannot manufacture devotion. It is the work of grace, but of course we have to want it and create the conditions that can allow it to happen. Anything that helps us to be less willful, less pushy, less judgmental toward ourselves is a good place to start, because the face we turn toward ourselves is the face we turn toward the world.

    I was especially moved by this reading, primarily because of the very profound last line: the face we turn toward ourselves is the face we turn toward the world. Do you smile and look lovingly at yourself in the mirror? Or do you only find flaws? Do you love the world, or only see its flaws? It's an idea worth pondering...

    Merry Christmas!

        Leta