21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Seventeen
Some questions to spur you in your reflective writing:
What reminds you that you are the product of an ancestral lineage? Are there any rituals you keep that come from the generations before you?
When do you feel most connected to your community?
Is it harder for you to share the things you want with others, or to offer the things you want to yourself?
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
– “Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte, House of Belonging
21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Sixteen
May you be well
May you be happy
May you be free.
I'd love to hear what action you decided to take, if you care to share it in the comments! Perhaps your idea will inspire someone else.
I wish you a day of spaciousness and delight.
Fire
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that makes fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
- Judy Brown
21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Fifteen
