21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Nineteen
What comes up for you when you think of offering kindness to someone you actively dislike?
What did you choose to do for yourself and the person you disagree with?
I'd love to hear, if you would like to share in the comments. Your words might be the spark that inspires someone else to take action!
If you feel stumped, here are some things I and my clients have done in the past:
left a box of chocolates anonymously in the mailbox of a grumpy co-worker
sent a postcard of forgiveness to a teacher who had acted unfairly
ordered a bouquet of flowers for a family member's birthday despite decades-long disagreement
raked leaves for a contentious (and sickly) neighbor
"It was beginning winter" It was beginning winter,An in-between time,The landscape still partly brown:The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,Above the blue snow. It was beginning winter,The light moved slowly over the frozen field,Over the dry seed-crowns,The beautiful surviving bonesSwinging in the wind. Light traveled over the wide field;Stayed.The weeds stopped swinging.The mind moved, not alone,Through the clear air, in the silence. Was it light?Was it light within?Was it light within light?Stillness becoming alive,Yet still? A lively understandable spiritOnce entertained you.It will come again.Be still.Wait.~ Theodore Roethke
21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Eighteen
What is your 5th word? What question arose for you?
I would love to hear in the comments, if you feel like sharing!
If you are just now joining this journey, you can visit Solstice Day Two for the first part of this exercise.
Winter Solstice at prehistoric site Newgrange, in Ireland
Winter Grace
by Patricia Fargnoli
If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed-down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.
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
